


hereafter

by voicedimplosives



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alcohol, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arkansas - Freeform, Author is not a scientist, Canada, Depression, Despair, F/M, Flashbacks, Grief/Mourning, Illinois, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Liverpool, London, No Pregnancy, Past Character Death, Post-Apocalypse, Post-apocalyptic despair, Probably could be more researched but at some point the perfect is the enemy of the good, Rey Needs A Hug, Semi-Public Sex, Slow Burn, Texas, UST utensil-sharing-tension, Vaginal Sex, Violence, and multiple chemises, author cannot stop writing variations on road trip romances, author would like to pretend that all anachronisms are merely the result of alternate history, but the world started falling apart in the 1910s, cupid’s 1892 winchester rifle, of COURSE they’re gonna get snowed in, outlaw dandy kylo ren, ozarks, somewhat researched, the Author Needs a Hug, there will be at least one hootananny, you've heard of radar love now get ready for railroad love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2020-10-05 22:15:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 104,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20496197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voicedimplosives/pseuds/voicedimplosives
Summary: Designation is not destiny.





	1. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

**Rey was just trying to get ** **south ** **to her family****. Whatever came next, all of the victory and defeat, all of the hardship and whatever semblance of glory, let it be said here and now, at the beginning: that was all she had ever meant to do.**

** _When the time comes_****, Sister Dosmit had always advised, ** ** _you’ll know what to do. Trust your heart and your gut._ **

**So it was to her kin she ventured, at last; ** **they had been waiting for her for so long****.**

* * *

Some would say, after the Discovery, that the first Alpha ever born must have been Alexander the Great. Some argued it _had_ to have been Genghis Khan. Some suggested Cleopatra. Some went even farther back, to the figures of myth and lore.

Could have been true, could have been apocryphal. No way of knowing; by the time people had come to understand the nature of their own mutated biology, the bodies of those figures were long gone, lost to the past.

The first one ever documented, however—the earliest strong-willed, indefatigable, irrepressible individual whose bones scientists were able to exhume and test for that crucial extra chromosome pair—had been Catherine the Great. Yekaterina Alekseyevna. Born 1729 and died 1796 from a stroke, though vengeful maids would spread rumors of an illicit affair with her horse gone terribly wrong. Her remains had been dug up from their resting place in Saint Petersburg and studied, along with all the other available bones of rulers, both great and terrible, from the past.

As for the others, their test results would prove inconclusive. Or they were Betas. Or they'd been born after Catherine.

As for the Russian queen, the results had come back, clear as day: positive for the 24th chromosome pair, which cast a person as either Omega or Alpha, depending on its configuration. She’d been an Alpha. The earliest example of the mutation that could be found by scientists with the crude tools gifted to them by the industrial revolution and resulting second renaissance of the 19th century; a momentary blossoming of civilization, right before it all went to shit.

What might history have been without Alphas and Omegas trapped together in the world they'd torn apart?

Who could say. In the aftermath of the Catastrophe, there was hardly anyone left to ponder such questions.

So, although some might have insisted humans were always riding a rollicking train, free of brakes, on a one-way ticket to the end of times, it could be said that officially, as far as the meaningless historical records were concerned, 1729 was the beginning of the end.

. . .

In her pack Rey carried the following items:

One change of clothes, which included a set of men’s trousers and a sturdy button-down shirt, just as filthy as those on her body but a bit cooler, hewn from lighter fabrics. A knitted scarf and hat. Socks, too. And underwear, also men’s.

Rags for the bleeds and slick that came with her quarterly heat. Some dried herbs for cooking, some for poultices. A pot, a spoon. Two shards of flint for starting fires.

A dwindling supply of a crude decoction made from boiled balsam fir, spruce, and pine, which she hoped help to disguise her scent from any Alphas she might encounter.

A Ronson pist-o-liter, long since emptied of its fuel, but precious to her for sentimental reasons.

A silver toothpick, gifted to her.

A letter, read only once, committed to memory, then carefully stored in a leather wallet for safekeeping along with the only official document she’d ever had to her name: a birth certificate from Saint Padmé’s. Both worthless, preserved merely for sentimentality’s sake.

A lock of Sister Dosmit Ræh’s hair, gathered neatly with a bit of marigold yarn, bundled in the wallet alongside the useless documents.

A metal flask, half-full of rye.

The last of her tobacco and rolling papers.

A hunting knife. A Winchester 1892 rifle and three bullets. The antler of a buck she’d killed the previous winter, whittled into two distinct items: a bear figurine and a second knife.

Four pounds of venison jerky. A handkerchief serving as a makeshift vessel for a handful of dried raisins.

A second flask, larger—more of a canteen, really. This one for water.

A crude length of oilskin—canvas coated with linseed oil, with rope attachments—used to form her shelter on nights when a naturally protected area could not be found. A deerskin, upon or under which she slept.

One textbook, dog-eared and coverless, beaten to hell and back: _ The Alpha and the Omega: the Science of the Soul_, by Doctor Anakin Skywalker.

And a glass-bead rosary.

These were all her earthly possessions.

She was not prepared for everything, of course. No one ever was. But she’d thought she was pretty well-equipped for the road ahead when she’d stepped onto the docks of Halifax Harbour.

That was the way it went, though. Hindsight was twenty-twenty, foresight was a blur of hopes and dreams.

. . .

The extra chromosome pair had been discovered by an ambitious scientist named Anakin Skywalker in 1887, about twenty years or so after Louis Pasteur had discovered the nature of germs and Charles Darwin had put forth the theory of evolution.

Anakin had not just been heralded for his discovery by his peers. He’d been awarded the first ever Nobel Prize for Physiology in 1901, then invited to and toasted in the parlor of every person who considered themselves an intellectual, every person of means.

His benefactor, industrialist Mister Sheev Palpatine, had scholarships founded in his name across the nation, in all the most established institutions, Université Laval and McGill, the University of King’s College and the University of Toronto.

Anakin's late wife, a devout woman who had devoted much of her life to charity work before dying during childbirth, had been nominated for sainthood.

Streets had been named after Anakin, parades given in his honor. His grown children—a young debutante Alpha who’d married a Beta sailor and given birth to an Alpha boy, and her twin brother, an ascetic Beta monk—had received invitations into the upper echelons of society and sent the rumor mills grinding wherever they went.

“He’s brought balance to this world,” all had said of Anakin, in admiring tones. “He’s shown us the truth, the light, the way forward.”

Everyone had agreed.

Every person who had mattered, anyway.

Like every Alpha who now had a reason, a biological impetus, to _ behave _like an Alpha. 

A justification for their sins.

. . .

Sometimes, during her journey, to pass the dark and dangerous hours when she could not sleep, Rey would recount her story to the leaf-strewn forest floor, to the flames, to the unfeeling trees that fidgeted in the firelight.

_Once upon a time... I was Henrietta, named Wednesday for the day in January of 1900 when I was dropped on the doorstep of Saint Padmé's Home for Foundling Omegas, a newborn swaddled in yesterday’s newspaper, my parent-given Christian name scrawled in charcoal above the headline. _

_Now I am the only foundling from that home who survived the Catastrophe. _

_ I don’t know how to do anything else but survive anymore. _

The fire would listen politely, but she could tell it harbored little sympathy for her tale of woe.

And why should it?

All things must die. Even orphans. Even Omegas. Even fires. This, Rey had learned the hard way.

. . .

For over a decade, years and years and years that had bled together into one long orgiastic ballet of misery, the Catastrophe had seized the population in its fearsome jaws, and there had been no such thing as peace or safety. The four horsemen had run roughshod across the face of the earth, spreading pestilence, famine, war, and death.

In London, where Rey was born and abandoned, over two-thirds of the population had been struck down during her adolescence. It’d been the same in the rest of England; she’d read about the death tolls rising in the dailies until the day no newspaper was published, for there had been no one left to write the articles, work the printing presses, or distribute the copies. 

Many in the cities who’d survived the early days of the pandemic had died slower, more excruciating deaths: starvation, slower-killing diseases, the aftermath of the bombings, especially those that dropped the dreaded alphic gas on the cities. 

And all these problems were exacerbated by the precipitous drop in population; so much of the world had moved towards industrialization in the 20th century, and by the time the horsemen had finished their reaping, there had barely been anyone left to man the machines or keep the city running. In no time at all, things began to rust and decay.

No one knew for certain when or where the Catastrophe had begun; at least, no one whom Rey had ever encountered. But she knew this much: she was born in 1900, and when she was fifteen she saw the first wave of the illness—dubbed “the Lover's Death” by newspapers, caused by improperly quarantined experiments in genome therapy gone awry—take most of those who had lived in the home with her. Not long after, the bombs had begun falling. 

By the time she was nineteen, she had been left with no choice but to walk away from the devastation that had become her home, her whole life bundled up in a knapsack, a scarf around her face the only protection she wielded against air a sickly mustard color, thick as soup and ready to choke her.

She never looked back, not once the whole time she was walking. Perhaps the nuns at Saint Padmé had once been good Christians, perhaps not; regardless, she’d known the story of Lot’s wife by heart for years.

. . .

Traveling on foot from the Maritimes to Texas was always going to take a long time. Months and months. A year or longer, in all probability, and that was _ if _ she could maintain a brisk pace and _ if _ the weather stayed mild and _ if _ the terrain was not so impassible that she had to backtrack or detour along circuitous alternate routes. It would require fortitude. It would require grit. And it would require a good deal of patience.

But Rey had all those qualities in spades, designation be damned.

So she arrived at Halifax in Autumn of 1919 on what was probably one of the last schooners to ever cross the Atlantic, captained by an indomitable old Beta named Han Solo who’d promised her safe passage in exchange for nothing more than a pair of brass candlesticks, an outrageous bargain in her favor. In Halifax Harbour, or what remained of it, she changed out of her demure traveling day dress—cut up into extra heat rags, even then she knew fabric was not to be wasted—and into her pilfered men’s clothing. Then she set out along the tracks of the abandoned Nova Scotia Railway, headed north to Windsor and then on, southwest, towards Maine.

. . .

Before this story begins in earnest, it should be mentioned: of course there had been designations before 1887. Few and far between, not talked about in polite society, but still there, just as dirt swept under the carpet is invisible but not forgotten. 

It did seem, however, as if a few years prior to the Discovery, in the Spring of 1883 or ‘84, suddenly, without warning, an entire generation around the world had hit puberty and presented as Alpha or Omega, in numbers never before seen.

Before, there had been a world of Betas who had not even realized that 'designations' existed.

After, sex had become inescapable, in a way that most could not reconcile themselves with.

No longer had this been a fringe phenomenon, a genetic quirk confined to museums and sideshows. Donations had poured forth from titans of industry and nobility and governments alike, all concerned about their young ones. Research of the strange mutations had kicked into high gear; Anakin had been a beneficiary of that. 

Right place, right time.

And another thing: after the Discovery had been publicized, lauded, and accepted as irrefutable fact, the world did not _ immediately _fall into camps as neat and easy as Alpha, Omega, Beta.

It had been a messy business, restructuring all of mankind. Some things did fall away, by degrees. For a time. Like gramophone needles plucked from their grooves, the old bitter songs had been momentarily paused, prejudices set aside—perhaps with the expectation of resuming later—in order to make way for the new overriding ethos, designationism.

It had gone like this: Alphas run the world, Omegas repopulate it, and the labor of Betas keep it spinning.

This was to be the way forward.

The only problem was, not everyone agreed.

Some Alphas had not wanted to run the world, many Omegas had not wanted to repopulate it, and nearly all Betas had not found it fair that they should provide the labor. It had not been so simple as man versus woman or factory owner versus workers; not that they had ever been simple, either. 

An Alpha who had agreed with these new ideas, who’d quite liked the idea of control and power and wealth, might find themselves at odds with an Omega friend or family member, who’d bucked at the very mention of 'breeding'. They both might be put in the awkward position of comforting a loved one who did not possess the 24th chromosome pair, and thus had been relegated to the role of laborer or drone.

Plus, where would this have left the people who had been in power, but were discovered to be Omegas and Betas? Where would this leave those who had been part of the downtrodden peasant and working classes but whom tested positive for the Alpha chromosome? The entire foundation of the world had turned to sand, shifting beneath everyone’s feet. Sex and chaos. Those who, by the new rules, should've lost their exalted status in the world, were loath to be parted from it. Those who had nothing to lose and, for the first time in their lives, something to gain, were all too happy to divorce the elites from their privilege. 

A few years on, nations and families and religions had all begun to lose their meaning.

There had only been the worst of human nature, hungry and lustful and craven, and the all-consuming obsession with that one measly chromosome pair.

Oh yes, it had been a very messy business.

So came the wars. And with the wars had come famine. Both swept away those who might’ve known how to prevent the plague. Death had overseen the whole thing, a director staging his ballet.

Anakin had delivered balance, all right.

Because after the bombs had been dropped, the spiritus mundi poisoned, populations decimated, battles lost, countries wiped off the map, after the cities had been abandoned and the countryside harbored roving angry Alphas, still hopped up on the poison Anakin’s discoveries had engendered, there _ was _ a ferocious sort of balance. A wild and brutal and cruel balance, wherein might made right and to the victors went the spoils.

What was left of the world held its breath and waited. Maybe until it drowned, maybe until it resurfaced.

That was a sort of balance.

Wasn’t it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I never thought I would write an ABO fic but this idea wouldn't leave me alone so here we are!
> 
> This thing would literally not even exist if not for [Kat](https://twitter.com/delia_pavorum) who is not only my incredible beta reader but a dear friend and the world's best cheerleader. Many many thanks also to Trixie, Sophie, Becca, SemperfiDani, Gui aka snowdroprock, Chel, and all the people on twitter who at one point or another listened to/endured my _incessant_ fretting over this thing. You are all saints to me. ❤
> 
> Also honk honk I love the library, so each chapter title comes from a poem. Care to [read this one](https://poets.org/poem/second-coming)?
> 
> I did a lot of research for this fic but to be honest, I did hit a wall where I was just like: if anything is really inaccurate I'm chalking it up to alternate history. If you notice something egregiously incorrect to the point that it takes you out of the story it's totally fine to let me know, just please be kind :)
> 
> Also, I promise someday I will get over this crutch of using a prologue to start my story. Just not on this fic. 😂 Things will kick off in earnest next chapter!
> 
> Who is [Catherine the Great](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_the_Great)? [Genghis Khan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genghis_Khan)? [Cleopatra](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleopatra)?
> 
> Everything I know about the [human genome](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_genome), I learned from Wikipedia. (Honestly, that statement applies to most things.)
> 
> What is a [decoction](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decoction)?
> 
> Sailing between [England and America](https://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/behind-the-scenes/blog/18th-century-sailing-times-between-english-channel-and-coast-america): it can take a while!
> 
> Who is [Dosmit Raeh](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Dosmit_R%C3%A6h)?
> 
> [Oilskin is cool.](https://www.vam.ac.uk/blog/textiles-and-fashion/a-very-brief-history-of-staying-dry)
> 
> Can you make a knife from an antler? [You can!](http://www.suckercreek.org/Dave_Articiles/Cowboy_Blade.htm)
> 
> How to [make a cover scent AKA Rey's 'decoction'](https://www.outdoorlife.com/articles/2015/04/deer-hunting-how-make-homemade-cover-scent/).
> 
> Let's talk [Intercolonial Railway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intercolonial_Railway). Here is [some history](https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/railway-history)!
> 
> An idea of the kind of [fashion](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/46/Stanis%C5%82aw_Lentz%2C_Strajk.jpg) Rey is working with.
> 
> A [fun history](https://sharrowmills.com/pages/the-story-of-the-everyday-lighter) of lighters!
> 
> [Cupid's Winchester Rifle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_rifle).
> 
> [Canadian universities!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_universities_in_Canada)
> 
> Okay that is more or less everything for this chapter. If I missed any links I'll throw 'em in the next one. Thank you for reading! ❤


	2. Can the shadow go back on the dial, Or a new world be given for the old?

**** **“C major.”**

**“But Sister Dosmit, that’s the easiest—”**

**“We must start at the beginning, Henrietta.”**

**A sullen silence. Sunlight tumbling in through trembling lace curtains. A boy outside on a bicycle, shouting to his friends as he tears down the street.**

**Young Henrietta groans, then plays the scale, up the octave and back down it. Her small hands struggle, just a bit, to stretch between keys. It will get easier as she grows, or so she has been told.**

**“Good.”**

**“There’s no point in me learning to play piano. Ivano Troade told me so.”**

**“Why would he say that?”**

**“Because I’ll just end up a mother or a nun, and no one cares whether they know how to play or not.”**

**“You don’t think ** ** _they _ ** **care?”**

**That throws Henrietta, so she tries to throw her tutor right back. “How do ** ** _you _ ** **know how to play? What’s an omegan nun need to play the piano for?”**

**“For the joy of moving her fingers across the keys.” Sister Dosmit's thin lips go thinner. “For the joy of hearing music and of producing it. You’ll find you won’t suffer greatly for having a skill the Alphas don’t require of you, Henrietta. Only the opposite. And so long as you don’t go advertising it—”**

**“Advertising…?”**

**Henrietta cannot be more than five or six years old. Again, she is thrown; she’s only ever heard that word in the context of newspapers. The windows of grocers, maybe.**

**“Don’t be a braggart. No need to gloat.”**

**“Hmph,” she says, unimpressed.**

**“You’ll never suffer as I have.” The nun tries to smile but it’s crooked. And it doesn’t begin to reach her eyes, which have gone distant. “You’ll never know the world as it was. Before.” Voice lowered, as though she is speaking only to herself, she adds, “I wonder if you’ll ever even fully understand what we have lost.”**

**Bored, unable to comprehend, Henrietta fidgets on the piano bench. “May I go outside and look at the baby duckies now?”**

**“Yes,” comes the nun’s sigh, as she closes the book of sheet music propped against the music rack. “But** **change into galoshes first, please. It looks like rain.”**

* * *

  


_ Autumn, 1920 _

The pitter-patter of a steady drizzle on oil-slicked canvas lifted Rey out of a light sleep.

_ Another night survived_, was her first waking thought.

There was a hierarchy to her needs first thing in the morning, so once she’d wiped the sleep from her eyes and stretched out her stiff limbs, she addressed them in the order in which they presented themselves.

Grabbing her rifle, she bustled out of her lean-to and nosed around her camp to look for tracks in the sodden underbrush. Satisfied the night had passed without intrusion, she leant herself against the rough bark of a white oak tree, one hand still on her rifle for balance, and attended to her business. She stared up at the crimson and golden leaves overhead as she did, watching them quiver from the impact of falling raindrops, and stuck out her tongue out to catch a few herself.

When she was finished, she grabbed some nearby leaves to clean herself up as best she could. Then she pulled down the canvas and did her best with drying that, too. Neither result was satisfactory, but the oversized trousers were still belted around her waist once more, the canvas still carefully folded and returned to her knapsack along with her deerskin blanket.

Next she rinsed her face and hands in a small stream not far from her camp, then refilled her water canteen.

Food was the final directive. There was something nagging at her, urging her not to dally this morning, so it was a small, simple breakfast: a few dried raisins and a strip of dried venison.

These were the easy parts of her morning ritual. Sometimes they were more complicated; when her heat came, followed by the bleeds, her rags needed to be regularly cleaned of slick and blood. Or when her stomach growled so formidably that she had to decide whether or not to mete herself out a bigger meal. Had to perform delicate mental negotiations.

She could not let herself starve. That was the main thing. Her family was waiting for her, so she must not starve.

When she had first arrived on the Canadian mainland, she’d had tea and coffee. The former she’d brought with her, the latter she’d bartered for in a dirty trading post somewhere in Nova Scotia with the last of her silverware. She’d also bought a tin stuffed with packets of biscuits, too; after she'd finished them it’d held the wild flowers she’d collected during her first summer as she made her way west through Ontario. She'd long since drank all of that and left the tin behind, dead weight. Still, she sighed at the memory. Tea and biscuits—those had made for nice mornings.

All gone now.

The following part of her day was pretty simple, too. Walk. Put one foot in front of the other, unless it was blocked, in which case, find a way around the obstacle, and then continue onward. There’d be a stop later, to hunt, if she thought she could catch something. Gather water, also according to opportunity. Darn and mend clothes, craft something; rest, maybe, if she’d made good time that day.

The air was damp and chill, a normal occurrence, but it held a bite that had not been there two weeks ago. Her breath rose up, hanging like a cloud for a few seconds until it dissipated into the silvery veil of rain and fog. 

Rey kept a page of tallies in the back of her one and only book, but it was not a precise measure of time; she'd missed days, along the way. Days of sickness, days of sorrow, days of lassitude. Even without knowing the exact date, however, it was clear to her that autumn was turning towards winter.

As she hoisted her pack up onto her back, tugging on the worn pair of knitted fingerless gloves from her pockets, preparing herself for another day of walking, she knew: it wouldn’t be long now until she’d have a difficult decision to make, to keep on or hunker down for another winter.

. . .

She would often sing old nursery rhymes to herself to pass the hours.

They reminded her of gentler, easier times, when she had been a small child under the care of the stern-mouthed nuns and monks at Saint Padmé’s Home for Foundling Omegas, just one of a teeming throng of unclaimed children rattling around the old converted rectory.

Often, she wondered about that. Before the Catastrophe, from her muddled adolescent understanding, omegan children—girls in particular—were quite valuable to their parents. An Alpha looking to mate might pay a handsome bridewealth for the right Omega, regardless of their dowry.

And yet. The home had been so frequently overrun with foundlings and orphans that Rey had spent much of her early childhood sharing a bed with someone, all of them packed like sardines in a long dormer room lined with three-level bunks.

Perhaps their parents had foreseen the fate the world would choose for them, and could not bear to watch. Perhaps they’d considered an Alpha progeny more profitable in the long run, and less demanding in the interim. Rey didn’t know. It hardly mattered anymore, anyway.

The walks, though. Saint Padmé’s had been installed in the Omega district of London, formerly known as Shoreditch and Hoxton, and they’d been allowed to wander the neighborhood as far as the Saint Paul to the east and Saint Michael to the west, no higher than Canal Road, no lower than the train tracks. No less than six at a time, and always with a chaperone. But it had still been something of a relief to go out into the world, to see other Omegas living relatively ordinary lives.

Her favorite had been when they'd go to Palpatine Park and sang all their favorite nursery rhymes, Odavia and Ivano and Namenthe and Quinar and Devi and Henrietta, as she had been called back then. These were good memories for Rey.

“One for sorrow,” Rey intoned quietly now, as she heaved herself and her pack up over a mossy bulk of boulder then back down onto the slippery, leaf-plastered trail on the other side. “Two for joy.”

She could still remember Sister Dosmit humming along with them; she had usually been assigned as their chaperone on those little outings. Rey also remembered how the nun’s mouth would twist at certain lines, a moue of distaste passing across her plain features.

“Three for an Omega girl. Four for an Alpha Boy.”

That one had always made Sister Dosmit look like she was sucking on something sour.

Rey continued, under her breath. “Five for silver, six for gold.”

Wasn’t that funny to think about now? How useless those materials had become to her for anything other than sentimentality and aesthetic pleasure.

The next line hit too close to home, so it was more panted than actually spoken aloud.

“Seven for a secret, never to be told.”

A glance around the forest. Drifting fog wreathed the ground and the air sputtered with raindrops that had broken through the fiery canopy above, but there was otherwise not a single other soul about. Except, she could _ just _make out a sound… 

“Eight for a wish, nine for a kiss,” Rey muttered to herself, as she drew her knife from the sheath at her belt and slowly, carefully, lowered her pack to the ground.

There, up ahead. A small pond in a clearing. And floating on its rain-rippled surface: a male mallard, its head an iridescent emerald green, beak the same color as the golden maple leaves. Beside it, a female, dappled brown. In a little cluster behind them, their young ones, full grown after a fat summer, quacking complacently, nearly ready to migrate south. It was a peaceful scene. Domestic, almost.

She felt a twinge of longing, right before her stomach growled.

_ The terrible, the miraculous. _

The last two lines of the nursery rhyme went unspoken. Rey was too focused, and utter silence, she had learned, was necessary for this unpleasant task.

But they were thus: _ Ten for a bird, you must not miss. _

. . .

By late afternoon, the trail she’d been following converged with the railroad tracks. She’d been avoiding them after spotting a pack of mangy, wild-eyed Alphas headed in the same direction as her nearly a week ago. When she’d seen them, there’d been nothing but flat wheat fields in every direction; she’d crawled her way to freedom in the south, where she could hide in the cover of forest, but it had taken her far from the rails, miles off course. A worthwhile price for the evasion of danger, but lamentable all the same.

Even now, Rey was cautious in her approach, still thanking her lucky stars she’d been upwind of them that day.

But here the rails were again, like an old friend. And in the distance, she spotted something gleaming white and crimson in the sunlight that had broken through the clouds.

Curiosity overtook caution. She kept as close to the trees as possible as she followed the old metal tracks and rotted wooden ties towards the object.

A sign.

Up close, its paint was weathered and peeling. No matter. She could make out the red lettering well enough.

Chandrila, Illinois. Population, 305.

So that’s where she was. Rey set the pack down for a moment to dig the railway map out and locate herself on it. She was closer to Kentucky and Missouri than she'd realized; as it turned out, the detour had enabled her to make better time than she might have otherwise.

Now: to explore the town or take to the woods once more, circumventing it?

This question presented itself to her on a regular basis. Yet she had no ready answer. She never did. So she tarried in front of the sign, one hand on her hip, tilting her head back to drip the last of the canteen water down her parched throat, while she contemplated.

She’d made shockingly good time. Going by the sign, Chandrila had been no more than a small village, which meant the odds of encountering anyone were slim. And she might find coffee or tea, sweets, maybe some tinned flour or sugar, if Chandrila had once been home to a general store. Maybe a new pair of socks; the pair she'd stolen from an Eaton's in a ghost town in Ontario had more holes in the heels and toes than made sense to continue darning.

There _ might _be Alphas, though.

Rey sighed as she removed the rifle from her knapsack and double-checked its chambers. She had three bullets left, two of which she loaded now. She pulled out the decoction too, slathering a healthy dose around her neck and wrists. It was worth the risk, she supposed.

. . .

The remains of the town stood empty and still. Its once-paved roads had long ago begun crumbling to dirt, tufts of grass and dandelions sprouting from through their cracks; its wooden houses were moldering from within and without. Over the years the red brick facades of the main avenue had eroded; now they were festooned with vines of the creeping earth reclaiming the territory for herself. Nearly every window in the town was shattered.

Chandrila was the same as everywhere else.

The town in fact did have a general store, but a quick search of its shelves produced nothing of value. After an hour's ramble, she chose not the largest, finest place in Chandrila—a grand mansion in the Baroque Revival style, looking like an elaborately iced wedding cake perched atop a wildflower-covered knoll at the southern end of the main avenue—but the second finest, a short way out from town, a slightly smaller but still stately Queen Anne, replete with gables and veranda and turret, situated on the banks of what a sign informed her to be Lake Sah’ot.

Her reasoning: surely the biggest, nicest, most visible house in town would have already been picked clean? The second biggest was tucked far away from the road, half-devoured by the wild countryside, and seemed to Rey to offer a better chance of still containing useful items inside.

The front door was not locked. On the veranda there sat a rattan loveseat and matching armchairs, with a low coffee table in their center. Though they were grimy from years of neglect, draped in spiderwebs, Rey could close her eyes and envision a happy family seated upon them on a fine summer evening, watching the ducks swimming around in the reedy shallows of the lake.

It ached, to look at that forlorn veranda furniture. To think of the world that had passed. More than she might have expected it to.

Nothing barred her entrance into the house, but nothing welcomed it either. Thick velvet drapes were pulled shut over every window, leaving Rey with the unpleasant task of opening them and receiving numerous facefuls of dust for her trouble.

Once she had, what she found was a building beset by nature and its own dissolution. Peeling wallpaper, mold, moth and mouse-chewed holes, cobwebs, dust, the tenacious beginnings of weeds peeking through cracks in the hardwood floors, the droppings of fauna that had made the place their residence; she wrinkled her nose at the sheer waste, the dank musty smell, the shame of it all. It was beyond faded grandeur; it was God himself laughing scornfully at the hubris of man.

Room by room she went, taking in the dilapidation: the front vestibule, the parlor, the library, and at the back of the house, the dining room, a small kitchen—completely devoid of foodstuffs, this at least _ had _been raided—then finally, the billiard room.

All in ruins.

It was another risk, taking to the stairs. Who knew how stable they were anymore, how long their wood had been rotting away beneath the carpet runner, waiting to cave in on an unsuspecting trespasser?

But she'd come this far.

One step, two, up, up, up she raced. At the top of the stairs: a second library, its walls lined with shelf upon shelf of mildewing books. A hallway and at its end, a wash closet whose odorous air was so foul Rey slammed the door shut only a second after cracking it open. And the bedrooms.

Again, heavy drapes shrouded the rooms in darkness. Drawing them revealed only more ruin, more absence; there were abundant hints at the lives once led in this home, but the owners of those lives were nowhere to be found.

Rey wondered if they'd fled, as she had. Where had they gone? Were they alive now? If they had remained here, if the world were what it once had been, would they invite her, a penniless orphaned Omega, into their lovely home?

She lingered longer than she ought to have in the bedroom at the front of house, belonging, she presumed, to the young woman whose sepia and silver daguerreotype sat framed on its dusty dresser.

The woman had a sweet, apple-cheeked face. She was wearing a wide-brimmed merry widow hat and a very becoming day dress. Her expression was cheerful, pleasant; her dark eyes were bright with intelligence, and pointed directly at the camera. Directly at Rey.

Carefully, Rey set the frame flat, hiding that sweet, pleasant face and those intelligent eyes.

There was a massive armoire on the other side of the four poster bed. She passed around the bed towards it, letting the tips of her fingers run along the imberline damask coverlet, admiring its hues of ruby and sapphire and emerald. Over much of the creaky, dubious floor laid an oriental rug, woven in the same hues as the coverlet. Its pile was thick and her booted footfall was muffled when she tread upon it.

She was distracted from the armoire by a folded slip of paper on the nightstand, tucked under an oil lamp hewn from stained glass.

Again, her curiosity won out. She snatched at the paper, shaking off the dust, and tore it open.

No one had ever written a letter to her. Not once in her whole life.

“To my darling Omega…”

With just as much haste, compounded now by shame, she re-folded the letter and returned it to its bedside station.

Her cheeks flamed, her conscience scalded her. That had been something intimate once, something treasured maybe. It was too much of a violation. How might _ she _ rage against someone who read the letter Rey carried, without her permission? Biting her lip, she turned once more towards the armoire.

Many expensive, beautiful things were stored inside. Fashionable, from the last of the time when words like ‘fashionable’ meant anything. The moths had gotten in, but even chewed through with holes, the garments were undeniably of superior quality, the inside of their lapels bearing labels from London and Paris.

Hobble skirts, kimonos, morning and afternoon dresses in soft cotton and lace, evening gowns in sheer silks and satins with crystalline beading. Hat boxes full of outrageous and beautiful creations. And across the room, in the dresser drawers: lacy camisoles and petticoats and chemises and corsets and elbow-length silk gloves and wrist-length kid ones and stockings and all of it smooth, supple materials, exquisitely crafted, dripping with pearls and jewels, fine, so fine, all of it so very expensive and fine. An entire life’s worth of fine belongings; no one left to live that life.

And all of it utterly useless to Rey.

None of it would last a week, not with the pace she’d been keeping. And to carry it would only make her pack heavier.

Perhaps she did pull out a silk gown the color of summer sunflowers, overlaid with sheer white chiffon, and hold it in front of her thin frame before the silvering mirror. Perhaps she curtsied to herself. But she knew she could not take it with her. Knew she would have to return it to its hanging place and continue living a life that had no place for things like gowns the color of summer sunflowers.

She felt the urge to cry but she did not allow herself to. Instead she moved on to the servant's quarters in the attic and found a very sturdy pair of knitted wool socks in the room's tiny closet.

That was all Rey took from the second-biggest house in Chandrila.

. . .

It had required some trial and error but eventually, Rey had gotten the hang of cooking duck and rabbit and squirrel over an open fire. With learned efficiency she took to it that night, once she was back in the forest where she felt safe and protected. She cleaned, skinned, gutted, beheaded, and broke down the duck before skewering it on a long branch, which she then rested in the forked tops of larger branches she'd stood in the dirt on either side of the fire.

Dinner underway, she used a few more foraged branches to pitch her oilskin lean-to for the night.

After that, there was nothing left to do but keep an eye on the fat drippings to ensure they didn’t provoke the fire into a flare-up, and slowly spin the duck as it roasted. Rey knew she had about two hours to wait, but really, there was no more pressing demand than her hunger. She would happily wait two hours if meant she’d go to sleep with a full belly; she knew all about waiting and two hours was nothing in the grand scheme of things.

A low, flat-ish rock nearby, dragged close to the flame, made for a decent enough perch. She laid her deerskin over it and groaned with exhaustion as she took a seat. A yawn eclipsed her attention for a moment. With a tug, her hair tumbled down from the three buns she’d pulled it into at midday, when the fog and rain had cleared and the air had grown sticky warm. She tugged off one boot then the other and extended her legs, warming and drying her feet—clad in nice, new, holeless woolen socks—by the embers.

Addressing the roasting duck with a sigh, she began:

“Once upon a time, my name was Henrietta Wednesday…”

. . .

She awoke the next day not to the sound of rain on her lean-to but to the heat of a brilliant morning sun pulling sweat from her brow, pouring languor into her bones.

_ Another night survived, _ was her first thought, as it always was. 

Then her trek was resumed. Ever west, and ever south.

To her kin, who were waiting.

. . .

Two days later, something unusual occurred.

. . .

It was late morning, the sun almost directly overhead, when she spied it.

In the distance, rising from the trees: smoke. A great deal of it, the kind that billows up in greasy black plumes from a raging fire.

Rey tamped down the memories of London on fire, a hellscape brought into existence on Earth, and set her thoughts on the smoke of the here and now. Though the forest was thick, she was at the top of a low rolling hill, and her vantage point was relatively good. She could see the source of the smoke with ease.

There, atop the next hill over: the trees had been cleared away, and in their stead rose a towering black fortress, stark against the clear blue sky, its ramparts constructed from bits of automobiles and pulled-up rails, train cars, ship hulls, steel beams and felled timber, scavenged pieces of a dead world reconfigured into a temple to the new. All of it was slathered with thick black tar, all of it jagged and hostile and screaming out its foul intentions to any who might dare to pass through its high iron gates.

It was the first sign of active, inhabited civilization Rey had seen in a long, long time.

And on the wind that had lifted the smoke, which brushed softly against her face as she broke free of the treeline and stared out across the grassy valley to the strange fortress, came a scent. A scent she _ knew_.

She bit her lip and drew back into the trees, trembling with adrenaline and fear.

Alphas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/rectors_memory.html)?
> 
> I hope it's okay if I take a second to talk about inspiration for this fic. It came from all over. Margaret Atwood, just all her stuff, but specifically in this story I borrow some of her ideas about a post-apocalyptic world from the [MaddAdam trilogy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MaddAddam) which is incredible. [There's also probably a bit of [The Handmaid's Tale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Handmaid%27s_Tale) influence in the post-Discovery, pre-Catastrophe world.] [Summer Heat](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11605809/chapters/26089497), obviously. I mean... of course, y'know? The flashback at the beginning of each chapter is a device I saw [lachesisgrimm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/olga_theodora/pseuds/lachesisgrimm) use in [walk the halls (climb up the walls)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15724410/chapters/36554886) which I cannot recommend enough. I was very much inspired by one particular historical AU, [secretreylotrash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadOldWest/pseuds/SecretReyloTrash)'s brilliant and mesmerizing [The Trail Bride](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17454824/chapters/41100980), which if you haven't read, please go read immediately. It's a masterpiece. 
> 
> I was also inspired by the atmosphere in [Dead Man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Man) [and straight up stole elements of Kylo's look from that, don't worry you'll see] as well as visuals from [The Revenant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revenant_\(2015_film\)), as much as I didn't care for that film, [Slow West](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_West), [Anne with an E](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_with_an_E), and [The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Assassination_of_Jesse_James_by_the_Coward_Robert_Ford). There is one other novel that inspired me but I'll talk more about that later.
> 
> Some notes?
> 
> Here is a map charting Rey's [trek](https://imgur.com/a/rnaPK68) across North America prior to this chapter. [[The map in its entirety](https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3701p.ct001841/?r=0.108,0.139,0.693,0.277,0). Thanks to Trixie who found this for me!]
> 
> [Lean-to goals](http://nwwoodsman.com/sitebuilder/images/Tarp_Tent3-429x398.jpg).
> 
> Very useful vid on [gilded era fashion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxqg26-6nXs).
> 
> A really great version of [One for Sorrow, Two for Joy](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fPbWEa1cyg). And some [info](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_for_Sorrow_\(nursery_rhyme\)) about it.
> 
> [Duck preparation](https://honest-food.net/wild-ducks-eating-everything-but-the-quack/) and [duck cooking in the wild](https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/primal-cooking-how-to-roast-meat-on-a-spit/).
> 
> [Chandrila inspiration](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Main_Street,_Woodstock,_Ill.jpg).
> 
> What is [Eaton's](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eaton%27s)?
> 
> Many thanks again to Sophie, who directed me towards this fantastic interactive version of [Charles Booth' map of London](https://booth.lse.ac.uk/map/14/-0.1174/51.5064/100/0)!
> 
> What are the [Baroque Revival](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_Revival_architecture) and [Queen Anne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Anne_style_architecture#American_Queen_Anne_style) architectural styles?
> 
> Examples of [imberline](https://fabricut.com/stroheim/search?d97ad29987942a5a02d041765f0e76a5).
> 
> [Some](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/70/99/15/709915fd104124389f32dd23b21eebdc.jpg) [inspo](https://portlandbathrepair.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/historic-victorian-mansion-floor-plans-awesome-victorian-cottage-house-plans-awesome-historic-house-plans-elegant-of-historic-victorian-mansion-floor-plans.jpg) for the house Rey raids.
> 
> Okay that's all from me for this chapter. Thank you so much everyone who has expressed their interest and who is reading/commenting, I'm overwhelmed and thrilled by the reception so far to this fic! 💓


	3. Is all that we see or seem But a dream within a dream?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Quick warning for this chapter: there is violence. I feel I've kept it from being very graphic, but if you are uncomfortable with even reading about violence in passing, when you get to the end of the chapter and read this sentence, _"He was crying, hands raised in prayer,_" you should skip down to the last line.**
> 
> Also, many, many thanks to Des aka [sofondabooks](https://twitter.com/sofondabooks), who made this totally lovely [moodboard](https://twitter.com/voicedimplosive/status/1171547181054078976) for the fic!! It's so pretty, I spent quite a while just ogling it. 😍

**“Oi!”**

**Sister Dosmit's sharply uttered reprimand startles Henrietta, but it is rendered toothless at once by the nun's dry laughter. Futilely attempting to hide the fistful of dirt-caked carrot peels behind her back, Henrietta aims a gap-toothed grin up at Dosmit.**

**“Don't eat those, they're dirty.”**

**“S'okay,” mumbles Henrietta, rubbing at them with the hem of her grubby pinafore. “See? All clean now.”**

**She shoves a few into her mouth, savoring the sweet vegetal flavor and the snap of the tendrils between her teeth.**

**“Mother Maz catches you doing that and it's my hide, not yours,” Dosmit says, but she makes no move to stop Henrietta; her quick, practiced peeling of potatoes never even pauses.**

**“Sorry.”**

**Henrietta stretches up onto her toes and returns the peels to the kitchen counter. She doesn't want to be the reason for anyone's hide, especially not Sister Dosmit's.**

**A heavy sigh issues forth from Dosmit. Her grey eyes slide over and down, meeting Henrietta's. The edge of her mouth twitches.**

**“Oh, go on then. But clean them proper, with water, and eat them all in here. Don't let anyone see you.”**

**Giggling, elated by both her treat and the secret they now share, Henrietta reaches again for the carrots.**

* * *

A scent wafted through the forest, carried on the chill Autumn breeze like a taunt: frying garlic and onion, celery, carrots, meat that was not hare or fowl, and something… fresh bread.

Her mouth watered. Shivering, she moved to the trunk of the white oak. Atop her body she had piled felled branches, most likely the result of a recent storm, as they still had their crimson-gold leaves upon them, and now she pulled them tight around herself.

So she was hiding. There was no shame in it; hiding was the sensible response to the scent of so many Alphas, so near. After detecting their signature on the wind, she’d reapplied the last of her decoction with a curse and a vow to brew more soon, then ventured a mile west to build this little fortress of her own.

Her mind raced. She dared not make a fire or set up her lean-to, for fear of discovery. But something about the twined scents of Alphas and cooking food—food she had not had in so long—it kept her close, as if bewitched.

Thoughts of last January rushed in. Winters had been coming earlier and staying in recent years—this was true even in London—and the year she'd arrived in Canada had been no exception. She’d stopped somewhere along the prairies of Ontario, inhibited in her progress by one blinding snow storm after another, a seemingly endless barrage of them that had left her holed up in a farmer’s cabin for three months.

It hadn't been a fruitless forestalling; on the homemade bookshelf in the cabin's cozy parlor, there had been literature on the native flora and fauna of North America, a well-loved collection of the Bronte sisters’ oeuvre, a better map of the North American railway systems than the one she'd found in Halifax. And stacked against the alee wall of the cabin: firewood, from ground to eaves.

In the pantry, Rey had despaired at the rotting onions and apples and pumpkins, age-blackened garlic, loaves of bread harder than stone and blooming with mold, shrunken potatoes riddled by eyes and sprouts. That had almost been enough to make her cry. But there among the spoilage, she had also found the jars.

So many of them, shelf upon shelf of jarred jellies and jams, pickled fruits and vegetables, country wines and herbs. Enough to carry even a farmer’s typically large family through a hard winter or even two. Enough for Rey to not only survive the snow-trapped months, but put on some much-needed weight and gain her strength. She’d stayed there, warm and well-fed, until spring, until the call of her purpose had forced her to abandon the little cabin and its beautifully stocked pantry, though she’d carried as much of it with her as she could. It was all gone by August, and much of the weight she’d gained too, despite an easy summer filled with fattened hare and forest fruit and the underbrush she now knew to be edible.

Fortune had shone down upon her, but thinking of that pantry now was a mistake. Saliva pooled in her jowls and her stomach gave a treasonous grumble. Begrudgingly, she fumbled through her pack and tore a strip of dried venison from her supply, then shoved it in her mouth, chewing for many long minutes. It was not satisfying, did not live up to the taunting aroma of the fortress. There was no frying oil, no garlic, nothing delicious about the sinewy wad of meat.

But it would have to make do. Her fear and the two scents’ entrancement kept her rooted there, burrowing tighter against the tree trunk, holding the branches close. She remained that way for the rest of the day and all through the long night.

. . .

By morning she had a plan.

She would spend some time, no more than a day or two, in the low, rolling hills around the fortress. There was sense in the decision; the venison would not last much longer and there was food to be found in this area. To the north of the fortress she had passed a large swamp, ringed in cattails. The farmer’s book, committed to memory over the course of three months, had taught her ways to harvest and prepare those. She might fish in its reedy waters. She might gather sap from the forest’s maple trees, fallen seeds and nuts, leaves from lambsquarter. Perhaps she might even locate an orchard nearby. Collect as many apples as she could.

And in her downtime, she could keep an eye on the strange, jagged fortress on the hill. Learn its rhythms, learn who lived inside.

It was a good plan.

(No. 

No, it wasn’t, and she knew it. A good plan would be to hurry on, out of harm’s way. To move herself beyond the reach of God-only-knew how many Alphas. But something stubborn within her refused to do so. Not until she better understood what she had seen and smelled.

So this plan would have to suffice.)

. . .

Her first action, upon emerging from her hidey-hole, was to brew more decoction of plants for her cover scent. Rey chose to believe that the stuff did what it was supposed to. It gave her peace of mind, and that was good enough for her.

These woods were not home to the balsam fir, spruce, and pine she had chosen for the last batch; but perhaps it was better to disguise her scent with the native plants of this place, instead of those of Ontario.

Goldenrod, she settled on. And the brilliant leaves of several different oak trees. Liverwort and milkweed and amaranth, too, along with a bit of the dark loamy soil for good measure. All of it, she gathered in her pot with the clear, cool water from a spring. To boil it, she went farther south, not stopping until the scent of the Alphas was completely gone from the air. Then she built a small fire and nestled the pot in its embers.

With that finished, there was nothing for it but to wait and watch and plan.

. . .

Two days passed. By the wan light of the early morning, she caught frogs and ducks in the swamps and snared hares in the forest. Then, food procured, decoction applied liberally to all exposed glands, she would settle in on a glittering limestone bluff not far from the fortress, watching its tar-coated walls and trying to glean all she could.

There had been several Alphas who'd approached the towering iron gates, which had opened for them on silent hinges. Then they'd disappeared inside; she had not seen them again. 

Not a single soul had left in her two days of observation.

It was on the third day that she heard it. She’d been gathering wool in the shade of a very tall sycamore tree, for the day was milder than those that had preceded it, activity at the gates nonexistent, and her bones weary.

Suddenly: the roar of a crowd, all cheering as one.

Hastily, heart pounding, she scrambled up the sycamore, up, up, up to the highest branch she could trust to support her. And then, clutching the trunk in an iron grip, she turned her face to the fortress.

From this vantage point, she could see over the walls as she could not before. Her eyesight was good, it always had been, though now she wished absently for a spyglass so she might enhance it further and bring the figures into focus.

Still, she could make do as it was with a little squinting. And at what she beheld, perhaps it was in her best interest that the proceedings had the slight blur of distance.

There was a sort of town square inside the fortress walls; a gathering place for the inhabitants, she supposed. And indeed, a crowd was gathered now around an elevated wooden platform, a stage in the square’s center, where a giant of a man in a gold robe sat slouched upon a throne of bones. The man was old, bald, with a face like a dessicated apple core. He looked completely at ease. Amused, even.

Beside the throne stood a redhead in a military trench coat, a general’s hat perched upon his gleaming copper hair, his pale face straining with morbid enthusiasm.

And at the other end of the platform, there was an Alpha.

A strong, strapping, big one, standing at the head of a queue of elderly men; they were bound at the hands and feet, wearing dejection, defeat, in their wrinkled faces. Rey sniffed the air. They were _ all _ Alphas, save for the red-haired man.

Something about the strong young Alpha drew her eyes back; his garb was a peculiar mix of frontiersman and outlaw and outdated fop. Over everything he wore a massive shaggy bearskin coat. Rey could only imagine the size of the bear, if it was able to produce a garment that could hang to his knees yet cover his broad back and long arms. Underneath he had on a dingy shirt, once-white, a buckskin vest, high-waisted trousers tucked into black leather boots. Sturdy hunter’s boots.

He was magnetic. Dark waves of hair fell to his shoulders. She tried to tear her eyes away yet she could not. The lower half of his face was hidden by a dark kerchief tied at the back of his head, his brow by a black pork pie hat. But his eyes were still visible, and they burned; dark coals, alive and furious.

From the tangle of scents coming from the fortress, Rey noticed one in particular; it might have been his. It was the smell of a man, musky and warm, but also the scent of an Alpha, stronger than any she'd experienced before, like the first snowfall of winter and smoke from a homey cabin's chimney and roasting chestnuts. It was wonderful. 

She wanted it upon her person all the days of her life. Even as the thought formed in her mind, she startled. That was odd. Where had such a notion come from? Who would want the scent of another person on themselves?

Holding her breath and squinting, intent on not being distracted, Rey made a quick mental note to get more vitamin-rich vittles if she could. She must be more tired than she’d realized, to be having such strange thoughts. 

Down below, the Alpha unsheathed a massive sword from his back, a broadsword nearly as long as Rey was tall, like those carried by the Alpha Vikings in a picture book she’d once loved. He dipped it into a wooden barrel that sloshed to the brim with dark liquid.

When he pulled it out, the weapon dripped onto the wooden planks under his boots. With a match, he set it aflame. Then he hefted it towards the sky.

Rey was not the only one entranced by the Alpha’s theatrics. Down on the ground, drawn in close to the platform, the onlookers stood silent, their heads tilted back as they gaped up at the burning sword. And from behind, as he relaxed into his throne, a grin split open the giant Alpha’s scarred and withered face. The redheaded man leered at the crowd; on the shifting wind, Rey could smell his smug, mated satisfaction. If he had been a feathered creature, his plumage would have been puffed with vainglorious omegan pride.

The first of the aged Alphas was helped along by two burly masked men. He was made to kneel before the sword-bearer. He was crying, hands raised in prayer. Only a second before the sword swung downward did Rey realize what was happening, what she was witnessing.

This was an execution.

A series of them, judging by the queue of Alphas waiting their turn.

A cry rose up within her, horror and anguish mixing; she stifled it with a fist shoved knuckle-first into her mouth. Eyes shut tightly, she turned her face away.

But she was not quick enough. The image of the old Alpha’s head rolling across the boards was emblazoned in her mind.

Without thinking, heart pounding with raw animal fear, Rey dropped herself down from branch to branch. As soon as her feet hit the leaf-plastered ground she had her pack in her hands, then on her back.

In the next moment, she was running. Towards what, she knew not; away from what, she now knew all too well.

The only safety was away, away from the dark jagged fortress and the madness it held within.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52829/a-dream-within-a-dream)?
> 
> Some [rural Ontarian](http://www.archives.gov.on.ca/en/explore/online/agriculture/gallery.aspx) inspo!
> 
> [Viking swords](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_sword) are interesting, no?
> 
> I unrepentantly stole Kylo's [look](https://editorial01.shutterstock.com/wm-preview-1500/5879551d/65d65cf4/dead-man-1995-shutterstock-editorial-5879551d.jpg) from the 1995 film Dead Man. Well, mainly the hat and the coat. It's a good look, what can I say? Also, some fun facts about the [pork pie hat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pork_pie_hat), for good measure.
> 
> Okay maybe a little bit of inspiration also came from this picture of [Robert Redford](https://www.truewestmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/WM_Robert-Redford-in-Jeremiah-Johnson.jpg) in [Jeremiah Johnson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremiah_Johnson_\(film\)).
> 
> [Pinafores!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinafore) They sure are... an item of clothing, aren't they?
> 
> [Lambsquarters](https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=CHAL7)! A fun plant with a fun name that accurately describes how it looks.
> 
> Here is the first of many resources I used about the [forests in Illinois](https://web.extension.illinois.edu/forestry/il_forest_facts.html). Here is [another](http://www.treesforme.com/illinois.html).
> 
> [Goldenrods](http://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/prairie/plantx/cn_goldenrodx.htm): good, bad, or indifferent?
> 
> Some very helpful things to know about [stocking a pantry](https://www.walkerland.ca/stocking-a-real-food-pantry/).
> 
> This probably should've gone in the last chapter but oh well! [How to make your own cover scent](https://www.outdoorlife.com/articles/2015/04/deer-hunting-how-make-homemade-cover-scent/).
> 
> One more thing. Just an FYI/in case you missed it: my beta reader, Kat, who is truly an insightful, clever, generous QUEEN, is writing a [Twitter fic](https://twitter.com/delia_pavorum/status/1172279000535851009) about acting agent Rey and her troublesome client, movie star Ben Solo. It is so witty and fun and delightful! You should really go read it.
> 
> Okay that's all from me. I know this is a very short chapter but if you are reading along and interested in this story so far, here is some good news: after some discussion, Kat and I have agreed we can manage a twice-a-week posting schedule. I'm almost finished writing the latter chapters so I think we can speed this baby up a bit. Okay, now that's _really_ all from me. Thank you for reading! 💓


	4. The vane a little to the east Scares muslin souls away

**“Sister Dosmit?” whispers Henrietta.**

**An amused exhalation sounds out from beside her on the davenport. Henrietta is supposed to be reading quietly, as the other children in the playroom are; yet the nun seems neither surprised nor chagrined that her young charge is instead whispering to her.**

**“Yes, Henrietta?” is her equally soft reply. She does not miss a stitch in her knitting.**

**Henrietta runs her small fingers lovingly over the painting of a Viking horde on the opened page of the picture book in her lap. Ragnar Lodbrok, the caption names their leader. The book's title is ** ** _Legendary Alphas of Yore_****. Its words are very simple, printed in a large, easy-to-read font, and the colorful illustrations fill each page. They depict pirates, warriors, kings, queens, and explorers from around the world, all in the midst of heroic feats. The Viking king calls back to his brethren as they ambush an Anglo-Saxon castle, a massive broadsword in his gloved hands; it is nearly as big as he is. Bigger than Henrietta, for certain.**

**“Who was my daddy?” she asks.**

**Dosmit only sighs.**

**Henrietta turns the page. Princess Amina of Zaria stands on the walls of her queen mother’s city, arms loaded down with gold bracelets, head wrapped in a golden turban, solemnly overseeing a procession of conquered vassals through the city gates, ** ** _their _ ** **arms loaded down with kola nut offerings. Opposite this scene, Boadicea wields a bow and arrow as she leads her army of Iceni warriors. Tendrils of her long auburn hair fly about her fierce, blue-painted face. Her bowstring is pulled back, ready to shoot; the tip of her arrowhead is deadly sharp, sharp enough to pierce the armor of a Roman soldier. **

**“My mummy?” tries Henrietta. “Who was she, Sister?”**

**Dosmit shakes her head. Henrietta attempts to hide her anguish; she knows she's not the only one in the playroom who does not and will not ever know the identity of her parents.**

**She can feel her face crumpling anyway.**

**The next page of the book depicts Queen Seondeok of Silla, serene and beautiful and unyielding in her golden crown and resplendent silken finery, head held proudly as she sits painting a landscape, surrounded by her red and white and violet peonies, a statement of defiance against the convention of monarchical intermarriage. Not that little Henrietta understands this message.**

** _She might make a good mother,_ ** ** she thinks. Her lower lip begins to tremble and an ache takes hold of her throat.**

**“Who were ** ** _your_ ** ** mummy and daddy?”**

**“Just ordinary people,” answers Dosmit. “A livery man and a seamstress.”**

**Henrietta looks back to the Korean queen. “Maybe mine were just ordinary people, too.”**

**“Maybe.”**

**But it is no consolation. Henrietta is crestfallen. Silently, she fights the tears beading along her eyelashes.**

**“I wasn't always a nun, you know.”**

**Dosmit's lips are pursed, her expression thoughtful. Now she has paused her knitting.**

**“What were you before?” Henrietta asks, tears temporarily held at bay.**

**“I dressed as a man and worked as a sailor aboard a great big ship. We traveled around the world. Nobody knew I was an Omega back then. Nor a woman.”**

**“Wow.” Her squeaky voice is breathy with admiration. “How exciting!”**

**“It was.”**

**After a moment's consideration, Henrietta quietly declares, “I'll do that someday.”**

**A warm, calloused hand settles on the crown of her head, gently petting her fine brown hair.**

**“When I do, I'll go by Rey, for you, and so nobody knows who ** ** _I _ ** **am. And I'll shout orders at everybody just like an Alpha does. And I'll wear trousers and—and I'll smoke cigarettes, just like a boy.”**

**Dosmit gives her a soft, tender smile, still petting her hair, eyes shining in the playroom's low gaslight. Rey does not comprehend the sadness she finds in the nun's face; she wishes she could banish it, somehow, but she does not know the proper combination of words and actions to do so.**

**“I hope I get to see that,” is all Dosmit says.**

* * *

It was impossible for Rey to say for certain exactly how long she ran. She ran until her sides were lanced with spasmodic pain, until her lungs burned on each inhale, until sweat poured in rivulets down her face and beneath her clothing, until her joints ached and her booted feet screamed with blisters, until the shadows of the trees around her had shifted along the forest floor. Over streams and rocks and thick underbrush and wicked jutting roots she ran, past great looming karsts and walls of mottled grey-white limestone she leapt, tumbled, on and on, for hours it seemed, without rest, without ever slowing.

When the forest thinned and she emerged at the top of another towering bluff, this one overlooking a muddy, winding creek, she tumbled down its rocky side and lurched toward the embankment. There she dropped her pack and fell to her knees at the waters' edge, hands sinking into the soft riverbed as she submerged her entire head in its cool, sludgy depths.

Soon her lungs demanded air, so she raised herself up just enough to drink deeply, ravenously, greedily, ignoring the mineral, earthy taste. It was nearly too much for her overworked body; she had to work to keep from vomiting it all back up as soon as she’d swallowed her last mouthful.

Sated for a moment but still winded and weak from what felt like an eternity of exertion, she fell back onto her haunches and had a look at where she was.

Impossibly lost, for one thing. Irreconcilably far from the railroad tracks, which had been her guide since Halifax. On a small river, obviously, but which one? Her map made no note of things like small rivers. Across the languid waters, another mucky shoreline provided no answers. And beyond it, more forest, also unhelpful. She pivoted, to study the way she had come.

Then she startled.

The sight was half familiar; there she had emerged from the trees, there she had stumbled down the sloped side of a precipitous cliff. There was the muddy embankment she had crossed to get to the river. All as she had experienced only moments earlier. 

What truly startled her was the cliff itself; in its glittering salt-hued face there loomed the enormous mouth of a cave.

And standing in the mouth of that cave were three solemn-faced individuals, a woman and two men, dressed in roughspun frontier garb.

They all had rifles. They were all watching her.

Rey's heart all but stopped. They could not be more than fifteen paces away, an easy enough distance from which to hit a target too tired to run. Were they with the cruel strangers from the fortress? Had her effort to flee that madness been in vain?

At a pace slow enough that they might divine her intentions, Rey pulled her hands free from the mud and raised them above her head.

The woman, shorter than the other two, with beautiful long black hair she wore in a braid over one shoulder, nodded. She passed the rifle to the younger man with dark hair worn in short twists and wide, wary eyes, who wordlessly took it. Then she stomped across the pebbles between them and held out a helping hand to Rey.

The other man—the one with a silver flecked beard and the debonair look of the silent film stars she'd seen on posters before the end of such things—turned his head to spit.

Trembling with fear and exhaustion but out of options, Rey took the woman's hand and rose to her feet.

“Running from something?” the woman asked casually by way of greeting. She held a hand over her eyes to shield them from the slanted afternoon sun.

Rey swallowed, swaying, but said nothing. The woman sniffed the air.

“Omega,” the woman murmured, in a more pointed tone, “Are you running from the First Order? Because if you were, you'd find sanctuary here.”

There was no need to ask what the First Order was; in her heart, Rey already knew.

“Thank Providence,” she gasped, before collapsing into the woman's arms.

. . .

“Welcome to the Hollow in the Rock,” said a grey-haired woman, after seating herself on a crate in front of Rey.

It had taken them a while to reach the grey-haired woman. Finn and Rose, while introducing themselves, had each slung an arm around Rey after she’d nearly fainted on the spot. Then they had helped her through the mouth of the cave and down into its depths. The going had been slow. Rey's legs no longer seemed to be interested in cooperating; the floor of the cavernous tunnels was slippery and their passage had been interrupted frequently by stalactites and stalagmites.

She had been lowered onto an overturned apple crate in a candlelit grotto in one of the cave's seemingly endless system of tunnels and chambers. Where they'd placed her, she had remained. The three had left her for a moment or an hour—her eyes had drooped and she’d lost all track of time while she’d waited—then they’d returned with the grey-haired woman in tow.

The other man—Poe, he'd thrown out to Rey in passing, with a dashing grin that had made her avert her eyes—dropped Rey's pack down beside her now, then went to lean against the grotto wall.

Rey was so tired her head swam; her surroundings drifted in and out of focus. The grey-haired woman held herself proudly on her apple crate, like exiled royalty who would soon mount her coup and reclaim her throne. But her clothes were as simple and coarse as the others'.

She could not help but detect their scents and wonder at them. Rose and Poe were unmistakably Alpha, each with their own unique scents. The grey-haired woman was too, and hers reminded Rey of something, though she could not put her finger on what. 

Finn smelled like nothing but damp rock and lichen and masculine sweat. That was the Beta scent. In a world of distinct omegan and alphic signatures, they were simply neutral; their scent was what the world imprinted on them, and perhaps what soaps or perfumes they chose. Nothing else.

“Omega,” the Alpha woman tried again, gentling her raspy voice. “Can you tell me what you saw? Where you were? Were you in the fortress?”

“Y-yes.” Her own voice was a scrape of stone against stone. How many hours had it been since she'd spoken? How many days? How many _ months _ since she'd spoken to another human being? “Er, no,” she amended. “Not _ in _ it—I saw, though—I climbed—there was an old syca—the walls—a stage… I-I saw…”

The grey-haired woman sighed.

“Where am I? Who are you lot?” blurted Rey.

“As I said, you're down in the Hollow in the Rock, on Naberrie Creek, in what was once the great state of Illinois. Home and hide-out to many of our history's worst bandits, outlaws, and thieves, ever since the French moved out this way in the 1700's. Supposedly even Jesse James and his crew laid low here for a time.” The grey-haired woman paused a moment, gauging Rey's reaction. Rey merely nodded along, so she continued. “Now it is home to us. As for _ who _ we are… we call ourselves the Resistance. I'm Leia. You've met my three most trusted advisors. Seeing as I've told you all this, the question remains: who are _ you_, Omega?”

“Rey,” she answered, readily accepting the warm tin mug Finn pressed into her hands. She thanked him with a dip of her chin, and his solemn expression cracked, revealing a kind, handsome smile. He took a seat on a spare apple crate. “I'm not—from around here.”

Leia snorted. “Obviously. England?”

“London.”

“Were you there?” The abrupt question came from her left, where Poe had perched himself on a jutting bit of rockwall. He was peeling an apple; Rey's mouth watered at the sight of it, so she took a sip of her beverage.

Coffee. Dark and hot and bitter and _ good_.

“How do you still…?” she raised her mug inquisitively.

“We have our ways,” was Leia's terse reply. 

Rey nodded. She would let them keep their secrets if it meant she could keep hers.

“_Were _ you?” pressed Rose, in a softer manner than Poe’s. “In London during… Did you see…?”

“The bombings? The fires? The starving and the sick? The alphic horde?” Rey scowled at them all, biting back an angry retort, and opted simply for: “Yes.”

Rose shuddered. “Horrid. Can't even imagine—grew up in a small scrap of nowhere, myself. Hay's Mine was the name, down in Kentucky. We saw the Lover's Death take so many, everyone, really, but there was no madness like in the cities. Just… quiet. Deathly quiet. Everyone went into their shacks to die and then it got so _ quiet_.” Rose blinked rapidly, her dark eyes shining. “Too quiet. My sister Paige and I were conscripted. She didn't… well, anyway, by the time I came back… it was all over.”

Rey's earlier flare of resentment at Poe’s interrogatory tone softened; after all, she knew that quiet. In her mind's eye she saw Chandrila and a dozen other towns and villages, all alike. All playing host to the quiet stillness of utter decimation.

What was worse? For the end to come in a blaze of hellfire and chaos or with a silence and stillness that smothered all things? She could not say.

“We've all seen horrors,” Poe said tiredly.

She nodded. Rose did too.

“At the fortress…” began Rey, but then she paused, mulling over her wording. “I saw the First Order execute Alphas. Old men. I-I don't understand…”

Leia grimaced. “Was there an old Alpha hanging around, a big scarecrow of a man, face like scraps of boiled ham slapped onto a skull? Gold overcoat?”

Having just taken a sip of her hot coffee, Rey nearly spat it in Leia's face at the description. Swallowing, she hummed a nervous affirmative.

“Yes,” said Leia. “That's Mister Morfran Snoke. An Alpha and a former titan of industry. Railways and cattle were his trade. Couldn't let go of all that power and wealth after the Catastrophe, so he found a way to hold onto it.”

“Why were they killing those Alphas?”

Leia grew serious. “From what I hear, he will not suffer Alphas who present a threat to his… reign. Old Omegas can still be caretakers and old Betas can be used for easier domestic labor, but elderly Alphas… they take one step out of line and they have to die, lest they overthrow him. My guess? He caught wind of a coup.”

Almost as if on cue, an eerie whistling wind blew through. It set off a round of indignant squawking from the bats hidden in the shadowy cavern's eaves. For a moment, the candlelight flickered. A few flames were extinguished and Rose went to re-light them.

Leia's dark eyes burned with alphic fury. They reminded Rey of another set of eyes that had burned just the same.

Perhaps it was ill-advised, what she said next, but she had to try. “There was an executioner…”

A shadow passed over Leia's face. Where a moment ago she had looked vibrant and strong and righteous despite her age, now she looked like an old, tired woman. Her mouth opened and shut, once, twice; no response came. She stared solemnly at something beyond Rey, beyond the cave wall.

It was Poe who spoke next, sharp and clipped. “Snoke rebuilt the world inside the fortress, keeping the _ ordered _ way of things alive. Cruel. Inflexible. Exacting. How’s it go—the bullshit they came up with, Finn, after the Discovery?”

“Alphas run the world, Omegas populate it, the labor of Betas keep it spinning,” came Finn's equally sharp reply. He recited it the way a person recalled something they'd begrudgingly learned by heart as a child. Rey recognized the cadence because she had learned that same axiom, and could recite it in the exact same manner.

Poe scoffed. “That's it. That's Snoke's vision. Those old Alphas you saw? They agreed—_agree_—with that vision. They profited from it… until they didn't. Same goes for the First Order's Omegas—some of ‘em, anyway. Not all of 'em. Some have been abducted. Not the Betas, either. They're mostly prisoners of war.” Poe’s lip curled. “But your executioner? _ He's _ there 'cause he wants to be."

“He's not mine,” snapped Rey. Naturally, she did not mention how her stomach had flipped with need at the enticing scent on the wind that might have been his; she did not mention how she had been momentarily hypnotized by the glimpse she had gotten of the broad, muscled body beneath his bearskin coat. She did not mention anything else about him at all.

A pallid silence fell among the four. 

The memory of the old man's twisted face, smiling cruelly as he watched the beheading, came back to her. Rey shivered, then shivered anew at the proceeding memory: the masked Alpha who'd done his bidding, raising a sword of flames into the azure sky.

And yet—despite her protestations, his scent still clung to her senses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://www.bartleby.com/113/1060.html)?
> 
> Who is [Rognar Lodbrok](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnar_Lodbrok)? [Boadicea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boudica)? [Amina](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amina)? [Seondeok](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Seondeok_of_Silla)?
> 
> Inspiration for the [Hollow in the Rock](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave-In-Rock,_Illinois) [but relocated lol, striving hard for historical accuracy except I’ll do with Illinoisan geography as I please!]
> 
> Some deets about the [caves of southern Illinois](http://isgs.illinois.edu/outreach/geology-resources/caves-illinois-our-subterranean-landscape). And a fun [video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9Q2u7KW7gE).
> 
> Get it? [Hays Min[e]...or](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Hays_Minor)? 😏
> 
> Just a short one again today. What do you think of this new thing I'm trying where I actually attempt to pace myself and build suspense? It's definitely different from a lot of the things I've written before. I know I promised some more _development_ in this chapter but I promise you, the next chapter will be up on Sunday and there _will_ be a meeting at last! Thank you if you're still reading. I hope you're enjoying! 💓


	5. Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Quick note before this chapter, [Desiree](https://twitter.com/sofondabooks) has made another really beautiful moodboard for this fic which you can see [here](https://twitter.com/sofondabooks/status/1175044935419981825)! Thank you again, it is so so beautiful and I'm so thrilled you're enjoying!! 💓

**Henrietta is hovering on the brink of adolescence, thirteen or so. She is seated at her wooden desk, her best friend Odavia beside her, sharing a bench seat, and Mother Maz Kanata is giving a talk about the birds and the bees to her class, a rite of passage in their eighth and final year of their schooling.**

**“As it so happens, it is not the meek but rather the Alphas who shall inherit the earth. They are the most powerful—the sharpest minds, strongest bodies and the healthiest genes,” Maz announces dryly, like she’s given this speech a dozen times before. It’s the end of their arithmetic lesson; they should be headed out into the clear spring afternoon for a recess between classes, but instead they remain cooped up in the airless classroom, watching as the petite Mother Superior perches herself atop Sister Mashra’s desk.**

**“Omegas—that's you, my doves—are the most ** ** _important_****, because you beget new souls unto this earth.” There’s a strange glint in her eyes. “Should Omegas ever refuse to do their part, I promise you, the whole thing would fall to pieces.”**

**Young Henrietta does not quite grasp the meaning of this aside. How can they refuse to be Omegas? They are what they are, what they were born to be.**

**“And Betas?” interjects Namenthe. Ivano snickers at his best friend's impertinence; Henrietta and Odavia share a worried look.**

**But though Maz’s jaw tightens to a sharply delineated clench, and though she blows a hard breath out through her nostrils, and though she rolls her tiny eyes, she does not punish Namenthe for speaking out of turn.**

**“Not everyone can pollinate or procreate,” she says in a brisque tone. “Some must be the stalks that bear up the flowers.”**

**Later that same day, Henrietta catches her favorite nun in the hallway after supper and quiet hours, as everyone is preparing for bed.**

**“Sister,” she begins without preamble, in a low voice meant only for Dosmit’s ears, “Maz said something today about refusing to do our part. Omegas, I mean. How… would we do that?”**

**It’s an old trick, launching right into it, tried and true from when she was younger. Lead up to the question, and if Dosmit doesn’t want to answer, she will find a way to sidestep. Surprise the nun, and there’s a chance she might answer honestly. Dosmit’s eyebrows rise nearly to her brow, but she parries:**

**“What do you do whenever your turn comes to mop the floors?”**

**Henrietta gives a red-faced shrug, chagrined to be called out on her less than amenable habits.**

**“You fight. Or you flee.” Dosmit’s expression is pointed. Purposeful. “Or you find another way out. But you do—_not_—mop.”**

* * *

Kylo Ren, executioner for the First Order, was seated in his usual dizzyingly high-up haunt: atop a train car, one of many welded upon each other that comprised the fortress’s soaring ramparts. He was swinging his leg out, letting the heel of his boot rap against the boarded-up and tarred over train window each time it came back down, trying his damnedest to think about nothing in particular, when he caught a barely-there hint of a scent on the damp Autumn wind, more an impression than a tangible thing.

It was half-covered by something pungent and earthy but underneath that: a warm sugary aroma, baking bread, fresh coffee, all the makings of a delicious breakfast like he might’ve had as a boy when the world was still whole. He had smelled countless Omegas before. But there was something alluring about this one’s scent, something that made his throat thick with long-repressed pain, made him blink back the memories and nostalgia and yearning that rose up to drown him. His mouth watered with a new and different kind of hunger, one that had nothing to do with his belly.

“You are distracted,” growled a gruff voice. Supreme Leader Morfran Snoke. Kylo did not need to turn to sense the old Alpha drawing close, though his slippered feet were nearly silent upon the hot metal roof of the train car.

Damn. He’d been discovered. He dreaded being asked to perform more executions. The other day had taken a toll on him like others had not; he’d woken each night since convinced his hands—which had been protected by his leather gloves, still their pale, calloused selves—were permanently stained in the red-black blood of elderly Alphas. Their futile pleading still rang in his ears.

“What is it?” pressed Snoke, from too close behind him. Kylo slid an askance glance his way. He was dressed in his preferred adornment, a gold-thread overcoat as gaudy as it was eye-catching. He fancied himself a king these days; what had once been the county of Chandrila was now more or less his kingdom.

“Nothing,” Kylo answered, standing.

“You cannot lie to me, boy. I know your mind better than you do.”

Kylo sighed. “Thought I smelled something.”

“You _ thought _ or you _ did_? Come, Ren, be precise with your words. Do not dither—do not waste my time.”

There was a keenness to the Supreme Leader’s icy blue-eyed stare. It was not just interest, but the razor-sharp edge of avarice. And perception. He saw Kylo, had always seen Kylo, always_ understood _ Kylo, as few others truly did. Kylo shied from those eyes now; he turned to scan the rolling, gold-leafed horizon.

“I did,” he admitted. “It was an old scent, maybe from days ago, but it was an Omega.”

“Well.” Snoke brushed a speck of imaginary dirt from his sleeve with forced nonchalance. “Young? Healthy? Unmated?”

Doing all he could to press down the feelings the scent had stirred within him, Kylo managed a curt nod.

“Go after it.”

_ That _brought Kylo’s eyes back to Snoke’s, surprise warring with indignation; surely he was needed at the fortress? His expression must have said as much.

Snoke coughed out a dry laugh. “Oh, there was a time when you were sorely needed here, my faithful apprentice. I remember it fondly—the good old days, when we forged this place with my will and your hands. But…" his expression turned thoughtful, then cunning, “perhaps that time has passed? We have younger, stronger Alphas in our midst now. My_ own _ progeny, no son of a Beta sailor.” He dropped his voice to a dangerous purr. “So be a good lad, make yourself useful. Go fetch me a fresh Omega.”

Though Kylo flinched, he lowered his eyes and did not respond to the threat. To do so would be to invite more misery upon himself.

“Yes, my master,” he said.

He turned to go, pulling his kerchief back into place over his proud nose, but Snoke’s voice halted him. “Oh, and Ren?”

Again he remained silent, his back to Snoke, waiting for the Supreme Leader’s final jab. There was nothing the old Alpha loved more than having the last word.

“In case I spoke too obliquely before—I can find an executioner anywhere. One of my own children, even, free of your embarrassing heritage. So come back with something pleasing or do not come back at all.”

Kylo turned his head only enough for his nod of assent to be seen. Then he took his leave, useless alphic fury roiling in his gut. 

. . .

For a week, she stayed with the Resistance in the Hollow in the Rock. They shared all they had with her, and she repaid them the best she could with whatever information she could offer about England and Europe and the fortress. It was an agreeable trade for both parties.

Meals were usually porridge and apples in the morning and coarse country stews with beef and potato and carrots and grainy bread at night; bathing was done in the lazy current of Naberrie Creek. Card games were frequent; hootanannys less so. Rey did bear witness to one, a few nights after she arrived, wherein moonshine was procured and Rose and Poe and Finn danced together in such a manner that a piece of _ that _ puzzle, which had proved inscrutable to her, suddenly clicked into place.

Sometimes members of the Resistance stumbled home at dawn from clandestine missions, a haunted hollowness in their eyes that reminded Rey too much of Saint Padmé's in its final days. Not ready to learn where they went or what they were doing, she retired early so she would not have to see them leave; she was given a soft goose down pallet in a rock faced chamber all her own, separated from the cave's tunnels by a soft length of damask that fluttered in the intermittent drafts, and was all too happy to make use of it.

It was mostly a good week, a week of healing and rest. Rey slept deeply each night, sinking into dreams as dense and tangled as thorned rose bushes.

The masked Alpha executioner was always there, waiting for her. He always touched her in ways no one had, save for awkward assignations with Ivano Troade—two heat-fevered Omegas fumbling in the dark of a root cellar, desperately trying to offer each other respite—and in her dreams, she invited the masked Alpha’s touches. In her dreams, they mated like wild things.

In waking life, she was repulsed and confused by her somnolent desires.

. . .

The days were not warm but Finn and Rose invited her to take her lunch out on the banks of the creek with them anyway, as the sun shone down brightly on the forest and the muddy waters and the fresh air was a welcome relief from the time spent deep in the subterranean caverns.

Even if there _was_ a strange feeling she got as she sat there munching on her apple, like a spider climbing down her spine, like someone was watching her from afar. It was just a holdover from her terrible shock at what she’d seen at the fortress, she assured herself.

Finn told her of his childhood, remarkably similar to hers. Left on the doorstep of a home for omegan foundlings in New York, from which he ran away as soon as he was able to support himself with odd jobs and, when work dried up, petty theft. He’d joined the Coalition for Designationism in a desperate bid for a steady paycheck, a warm bed, and three square meals a day, not really understanding the cause he was to going to war over.

He had come to, though. And when he’d deserted, Rose, as an Alpha who had been eligible and chosen for conscription, had gone with him.

They’d wandered awhile, clinging to each other as the world fell apart around them, until they’d encountered Leia and the Resistance.

There they’d met Poe.

“That was it for me,” said Rose cryptically, like a woman with a good secret. She sent Finn a warm look, then broke into a giggle when he sent back an appreciative grin. “Everything I needed.”

There _ was _something on the wind that day; Rey could not put her finger on what, exactly. She gave the air a sniff, listening closely trying to ascertain why she felt unbalanced and nervy, but there was no particularly disconcerting scent or sound.

A hint of roasted chestnuts, the chimney smoke of a cozy cabin’s wood fire, maybe, but far-off and faint, perhaps coming from inside the Hollow.

And something she could not put into words, except that maybe it was… an instinct. A small voice in the attic of her mind, banging on the door, insisting there something was off. Something, or someone, was… 

Coming.

Or already there, perhaps, and watching, though she could see nothing through the trees on the other side of the river.

She shivered.

“Sorry about him, by the way.” Rose’s tone had turned apologetic, and it drew Rey out of her reverie and back into the present. “Poe can be… uh, curt, with newcomers. He’s been through a lot.”

“Doesn’t trust easy,” said Finn.

Rey nodded. “I know something about that.”

“You wanna tell us about it?”

To her utter shock, looking at Rose’s sweet face and the concerned furrow in Finn’s brow, Rey found that she did.

So, she opened her mouth and out poured some semblance of the truth. When it was done, Finn turned his head so he could discreetly wipe his eyes and Rose threw an arm around her shoulders. Rey leaned into the embrace, though Rose’s scent was strong as any Alpha’s, overpowering and potent and not quite right. Their heads knocked together. Both laughed a little awkwardly, diffusing the dolorous mood of her tale.

“You’re one tough cookie,” was all Rose said.

Rey nodded. It was true enough; Rey supposed, as a tough cookie herself, Rose would know. And really, what more could either of them say? Eyeing her pensively, Rose shepherded the conversation in a lighter direction—the hootananny planned for that evening, and the reasons why Rey really should attend. It was a kind gesture, one for which Rey felt infinitely grateful.

. . .

On the seventh morning, she brought her old railway map out for Leia’s inspection.

“Where are we, on this? Where can I rejoin the track?” she questioned, laying the map on the rickety table beside Leia’s breakfast.

Leia made no sign that she’d heard Rey nor did she look at the map until she’d scooped the last of her porridge into her mouth and swallowed the last of her coffee. Meanwhile, the pervasive dripping sound that echoed throughout the caverns and the squeaking of a few errant bats filled the silence between the women. Rey fidgeted on her apple crate, long since unaccustomed to doing things at someone else's pace. 

Once Leia had finished her breakfast, she gave Rey a complacent smile, pulled a pair of gold-rimmed spectacles from her shirtwaist’s breast pocket, perched them upon her nose, and picked up the weathered paper.

“1867? You couldn’t find anything newer?” she scoffed, eyeballing Rey over the rims.

“It’s gotten me this far,” retorted Rey.

With an amicable shrug, Leia resumed her perusal of the map. “Leaving us so soon?” she asked quietly, as her eyes flitted about the page.

It was Rey’s turn to shrug. “I need to get south—to my family.”

“How far south?”

“Jakku, Texas.”

Leia’s expression went cagey, but she nodded. “I hear things are better down that way.”

“I suppose I’ll find out,” said Rey. “They’ve been waiting for me for a long time.”

That seemed to appease the Alpha. “Suit yourself. Only…”

Rey wanted to prompt her to continue, but she bit her tongue and waited patiently as Leia scanned the map. Finally, her eyes rose again, fixing Rey with a forlorn look.

“I’ll show you the way,” she said finally. “But it’s important to me that you know you don’t have to go. There’s… room for you here, with us. You’d be safe. We won’t be in the Hollow forever—when the fight is over…” she faltered for a moment, then rallied: “We _ will _find a place for ourselves in this world. We will rebuild.”

It felt like a lifetime since Rey had been around people, let alone happy, healthy people. Maybe Leia was right. She could eke out a place for herself here. She could join those clandestine missions; she could make a difference, maybe. She opened her mouth, on the verge of saying yes. Of saying hang the map and hang her family.

_ But she had come so far, and they had been waiting for her for so long. _

“I’m sorry, but I must go,” she told Leia.

It was an understatement; there was a frisson of anxiety running through her like a spark along a fuse, demanding that she get moving before inertia kept her from ever moving again, demanding that she go, go, _ go_, before she combusted.

And Leia’s dark eyes harkened too much of another’s—of an executioner’s. She could not have them on her day in and day out, watching her, reminding her of her lustful dreams.

Of her own wantonness.

He was with the First Order; he stood for all the ideas that had burned the world to the ground. And what was more, he was their executioner. The hand that reaped what the Catastrophe had sowed. A _ murderer_.

A monster.

“I understand,” Leia said at last. “We’ll make sure you have what you need for your travels. The most direct route from here is not exactly easy, you’ll have to pass around or through the Ozarks, but…”

Rey tilted her head, once again waiting.

Leia sighed. “If you maintain the pace you’ve kept so far, your folks will have you home before Spring.”

“Thank you,” murmured Rey. “For everything. I won’t ever forget your kindness.”

“Damn my kindness, just remember _ me_. Remember the Resistance and the Hollow in the Rock. Don’t be afraid to rejoin us, Rey. Don’t forget who you are—too many have.” Leia swallowed heavily, then laid her hand upon Rey’s. “Far too many.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/stevenson/love_what_is_love.html)?
> 
> I _know_ I promised a meeting was coming and I _swear_ I thought the meeting was in this chapter but it is not, gentle readers, it is actually in the next one. There is method to this madness, there IS a story happening here- it's already begun, in fact, the flashbacks really are as much a part of it as the present day- and I'm sorry if I led you astray but I will probably post the next chapter earlier than Wednesday because I feel so bad!
> 
> Some notes, perhaps, until then?
> 
> All of Rey's schoolmates come from canon characters: [Namenthe](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Namenthe's_Crater), [Ivano](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Ivano_Troade), [Quinar](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Quinar), [Devi](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Devi_\(scavenger\)), and [Odavia](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Odavia_Anaru).
> 
> [Sister Mashra](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Mashra) and [Mother Maz](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Maz_Kanata).
> 
> What _is_ [moonshine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonshine) and do you like it? I've never had it myself but I have drunk my fair share of [tchatcha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chacha_\(brandy\)), [pálinka](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%A1linka), and [rakija](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rakia), all of which I have heard compared to the stuff. I like it well enough, I have to say! 😂
> 
> Let's talk history! Some fascinating [18th and 19th century education in England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_education_in_England#Eighteenth_century) information, plus two great sources more specifically about [early 20th century girls'](https://media.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php/education-in-1911/) and [boys'](http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/how-we-were-taught/) education.
> 
> What is a [shirtwaist](https://genealogylady.net/2015/05/30/fashion-moments-the-shirtwaist/)?
> 
> Okay, that's all from me this chapter. Apologies again for the false promises about a meeting but I swear it IS happening next chapter and if I am wrong, I will follow in the footsteps of the inimitable Werner Herzog and eat my own shoe. Thank you for reading! 💓


	6. Who is he? A railroad track toward hell? Breaking like a stick of furniture? The hope that suddenly overflows the cesspool?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whee back with another chapter already! All thanks to my stupendous beta reader, Kat, who is truly an angel.
> 
> **Warning: there is violence in this chapter. It is gun violence. As with the last chapter, I have done my best to keep it from being excessively gory. Still, if that is something you would like to avoid, I would recommend skipping to the last line once you see: _There was no hesitation on her part; she was as good as her word_.**
> 
> Here is an absolutely gorgeous [moodboard](https://twitter.com/MaeReylo/status/1176287318136635393) from [MaeReylo](https://twitter.com/MaeReylo), on Twitter. Isn't it lovely?? Click on it to check out the poem; it is SO perfect for this story.
> 
> And [here](https://twitter.com/rosicrucian1970/status/1176260234265780224) is a superb rendering of outlaw dandy Kylo Ren by [rosicrucian1970](https://twitter.com/rosicrucian1970), on Twitter. She is a super talented artist and writer, I recommend checking out her stuff!
> 
> Last one, another evocative and beautiful [moodboard](https://twitter.com/sofondabooks/status/1175936069897863168) from [msdes](https://twitter.com/sofondabooks), who just totally nails the mood of this fic! Thank you so much guys! 💓

**At seventeen, extremely late compared to most, with London and the rest of the world already tumbling headlong into the unstable final days of the Catastrophe, Henrietta goes through her first heat. The weeks leading up to it are long and arduous; she is irritable, overheated, her skin prickling with the feeling it is two sizes too small for her bones and organs. Like she's going to burst out of it, like there is too much of herself to be contained. Her head pounds. Her gut throbs with cramps. **

**Since finishing her own schooling, she divides her time between assisting the nuns in the classrooms and the quarantine halls at Saint Padmé’s. But one day, while in a lesson, she finds she cannot focus. She is excused once the nuns get a look at her dilated pupils and touch her sodden brow.**

**“It won't be long now,” Sister Mashra tells her, with a sniff. There is a tinge of pity in her normally gruff voice.**

**Henrietta wakes at sunrise the next morning, senseless and fevered. Without understanding what she's doing, wearing only her thin linen sleeping gown, she drags herself out into the garden and burrows under the scratchy branches of the hedgerow. It is early summer. The dirt is soft and damp and she claws at it with her bare hands, fingernails caked in black, until there is a shallow pit and a wall of dirt to shield her against the outside world. Then she lays herself down, pressing her clammy cheek to the cool earth.**

**They come for her after breakfast. She snarls at them, refusing to go; kicks and scratches and bites until they retreat. In the distance, near the back door of the home, she hears Mother Maz tell them to leave her be.**

**She weeps.**

**All day she lies there, core throbbing and cramping and underwear soaked, her body on fire, exhausting herself with her tears, falling in and out of a light sleep. Sister Dosmit approaches at some point in the afternoon and leaves a plate of buttered bread and pasties, easy to eat with only her hands. Henrietta waits until she has gone; then she tears into the offering with her fingers and teeth, barely noticing the grit of dirt on her tongue.**

**At night, under the cover of darkness, she rubs at herself, furiously ashamed and nauseous with wanting.**

**It lasts three days; she stays out in the garden for the duration, mindlessly devouring the simple meals Dosmit leaves for her, burrowing deeper and deeper into the soil, fearing and abhorring her own bestial self.**

**After, when the fever and slick ebb and the bleeds flow, she comes back inside. Brother Lor spots her stumbling through the halls, filthy and barefoot and still dressed in only her muddy sleeping gown. His wizened face twists with concern, but wordlessly he draws her a hot bath and leaves her to her own devices with naught more than a gentle pat on her shoulder. Once she is clean, she dons the thickest jumper she can find in the communal garment closet, along with a pair of boy's corduroy trousers. Then she tucks herself into her bed, shivering, heartsick, confused.**

**She is awoken in the night by the dip of the mattress. Sister Dosmit is sitting beside her, gently stroking her hair.**

**“I hate it, Dosmit,” she manages to croak. “I hate this. I hate my own body.”**

**“I understand,” is Dosmit's murmured response. No attempt to argue or to change her mind.**

**“I'll never mate, I'll never let an Alpha use this to control me. ** ** _Never_****.”**

**“I think,” the calloused hand keeps soothing her, so softly, softly enough that Henrietta rolls over to expose her red nose and redder eyes to Dosmit's sympathetic gaze, “that of all the people I have ever heard say that, I believe it the most coming from you.”**

**Henrietta sniffles, gives a weak chuckle.**

**“I have… a gift for you. I've waited a long time to give it.” The nun pulls out a textbook, bound in thick, gold-embossed leather, from under her habit.**

** _Alpha and Omega: the Science of the Soul, _ ** **reads its title. By Doctor Anakin Skywalker.**

**“The Discovery cannot be undone, nor can all the rest. But you should at least read for yourself what Doctor Skywalker found. What his thoughts were. His message has been… misinterpreted. Willfully so, I believe.”**

**“What was his message?” asks Henrietta, taking the book, running her fingertips along the ornate binding.**

**Dosmit's face takes on that steely edge, the one that lets Henrietta know she is thinking of the past, of the life she once led.**

**“Designation is not destiny,” she says.**

* * *

The scent was easy enough to track, though it was cold and they had attempted, feebly, to disguise it with that pungent, earthy perfume.

The Omega had moved south quickly; running, he suspected. There was a strong hint of panic and fear in the traces that were left behind. Not just the signature, either. It was in the way they had stormed through overgrown patches of wild bushes and grass, the chaotic winding nature of the path they had taken, a shred of shirt sleeve caught on a thorny branch, left behind for him to discover.

Messy. They had left a mess in their wake. What else could evoke such messiness but fear?

It made sense; no doubt the Omega had seen Snoke’s fortress and been confused, alarmed even, by its menacing presence. Perhaps the Omega had seen over the walls. Seen him. The lingering scent _ was _very faint, after all; they had passed through this way at least a few days ago, maybe longer.

There was something in that notion—that they had seen him performing his duty—that did not rest easily with Kylo Ren.

He did not care to question why; he simply moved onward, further south, following the beguiling scent of the Omega.

. . . 

He came within a hair’s breadth of losing his temper when the Omega’s trail ended. Not _ because _ it ended, per se, but because of _ where _it ended.

He’d been following the scent, more perturbed and agitated by the acrid stench of the Omega’s panic and exhaustion with every passing mile, until suddenly he broke out through the trees and found himself at the top of a cliff, looking out over the sluggish Naberrie River and beyond it, the hills of the Shawnee.

Right away, he knew where he was: the _ goddamned _ Hollow in the Rock. They knew of it in the First Order, just as those hiding deep under the rock beneath his feet knew of the fortress. There was a dubious standstill betweeen the two factions at the moment, but Kylo was no fool. He knew it could not last.

The curses he spit under his breath were fit for no one’s ears, let alone those of a frightened Omega. If they’d come this way, Kylo had no doubt they would have gone down to the river. And if they did that… 

Then it was almost certain they were with the Resistance now.

The Resistance—and her, the woman whose name he could not even let himself _ think_—would make this a more difficult task. Because try as he might to subscribe to Snoke’s vision for the world-to-come, Kylo knew in his heart that very few Omegas would willingly shun what the Resistance offered in favor of what the fortress held in store for them.

Mated, bred, tamed, domesticated. Broken, if necessary. Like an animal. He thought of the scent, and something primal, possessive, seized in his chest. He did not think he wanted that for this Omega.

Overcome by long-simmering fury, he clenched his jaw and bared his teeth at nothing, kicking the earth and crumbling rock, swearing a blue streak, until his anger was spent. When he finally regained control of himself, he retreated into the trees. There was no other choice; in order to return to the First Order, he must bring something pleasing home to his master.

This would require some planning.

. . .

Such was the plan he’d devised: he would range back through the forest, downriver a way. Then he would wait for nightfall, cross over, and make his way up the creek again, feet dragging through the shallows of the riverside so as to disguise his own scent as best he could.

Easy.

Once he spied the Hollow in the Rock by the thin moonlight, he drew back into the shadows of the Shawnee land's trees and settled down to wait.

A day passed. Then another.

He kept his vigil the entire time, barely sleeping, moving only to relieve himself and dine joylessly on the hard tack he’d stuffed in his pockets, no entertainment other than the comings and goings of the Hollow.

He saw at least one familiar face, that of Poe Dameron. He scoffed at the sight of the man who’d once been his childhood friend, then felt ridiculous, as there was no one around to hear his scoff. It made him cringe at his own weakness. What would Snoke say?

He was _ not _jealous of a Beta.

He wasn’t.

On the third day of his vigil, his luck turned. At about noon, sun high in the sky, out from the shadowed mouth of the cave emerged more strangers, a petite, dark-haired female Alpha with a stubborn set about her mouth and a Beta who smelled like her mate, taller than her and solidly built, dark eyes peering about in a way that spoke both of routine and hard-learned caution.

And a third member of their party, a young omegan woman wearing a man’s trousers, shirt, jacket and boots, which obscured her figure to him. She had a sweet, pretty face, tanned and freckled, and hair the color of coffee with a dash of cream, pulled back into a distinctive three-chignon style.

Kylo raised his face, gave a tentative sniff of the air and felt something yank at him, a great tugging in his gut.

He’d scented her. She was the one. _ The _Omega.

_ His _Omega, screamed some base part of himself, though he shook his head slightly, as though he could dislodge the thought from his brain.

Instinct screamed at him to move. Show himself to her, gauge her reaction, approach, take, touch, taste.

But he did not. He stayed hidden in the underbrush, straining to catch snippets of the idle conversation that passed between the three as they ate a lunch of apples and cheese—though they were barely intelligible from this distance—and he waited.

Patience was not his strong suit. It took every ounce of self-control Kylo had to not even fidget, let alone rise and do what biology demanded—be the Alpha he was meant to be.

_ Steady, steady, _ he told himself. _ That alphic female is small, but she looks fierce. The rifle she carries is probably loaded. And the Beta looks like he knows how to handle the revolver hanging in his holster. _

_ Bide your time. _

_ The right moment will present itself. _

. . . 

He only had to wait until morning before his Omega emerged once more from the cave, clad in the same rough garb she’d worn yesterday, but this time, carrying a large canvas knapsack. She clung to the straps digging into her shoulders as she passed down to the water, waiting while the dark-haired alphic woman and the Beta dragged out a rowboat.

And then, Kylo froze, barely even able to draw breath.

Another woman had appeared, trailing his Omega. One who also wore grubby men’s garb.

So different from the beaded and organza-draped evening gowns he remembered her in.

Her hair, once a luxuriant chocolate brown, had gone almost entirely to grey. There were lines on her once-spirited face that had not been there the last time he’d seen her, the last time they’d spoken.

She still held herself like a queen.

His throat burned and his eyes welled in a way they had not for many years; he had to look away.

Yet he could not stop the memories from coming. The feeling of that woman’s arms hugging a smaller, softer version of himself. Being doted on by her, being screamed at by her, screaming back at her, disappointing her.

Kylo remembered countless evenings spent entertaining himself or playing tiddlywinks with some governess or another in a very grand, very empty house. And then _ she _would come home from her glamorous state dinners and operas and suffragette meetings long after he’d been tucked into bed. She'd smooth his hair away from his face, pressing a regretful kiss to his temple. Every time, she’d promise him in a low voice that she would make it up to him tomorrow, always tomorrow. 

_ Tomorrow she would take him to Indianapolis or Chicago, tomorrow they would go to the lake and bring a picnic, tomorrow they would have themselves an adventure the likes of which even his father had never seen. _

They never did.

Eyes averted, he bided his time now as his Omega and the woman whose name he would not let himself recall parted ways. He heard them hollering out their farewells to each other. He heard his Omega climb into a rowboat, heard someone—he sniffed the air again, it was the female Alpha rowing, that made his hackles rise—speaking to her in reassuring tones as they crossed the creek. Heard her enter the forest to his right, headed south, up into the Shawnee Hills.

Still he waited. Until the Alpha and her rowboat had crossed back again, until the boat had been dragged back inside, until every last member of the Resistance had wandered back into the Hollow.

When he was sure he would not be spotted, he got to his feet, shook out the stiffness from days of inactivity, and made to follow his Omega.

. . .

She smelled so _ good_.

And the more he glimpsed of her, the graceful way she strode through the forest, the soft way she hummed childish songs to herself, her resolute face, so beautiful despite her ragged weariness… the more he felt some part of himself giving way, a dam that could not withhold the deluge.

To see her was to love her. Surely anyone with eyes would agree with him?

As he tracked her, he lost himself in a fantasy. In this fantasy, he stole her away like a monster in a fairytale. Except what he had in mind for them was not fit for the ears or eyes of children.

He would hide her somewhere safe and warm and comfortable. Somewhere to her liking. He would bathe her, limb by limb, missing not an inch of her lovely body. He would feed her. Whatever she wanted, he’d find it and kill it and cook it for her.

Then they’d fuck.

And fuck.

And _ fuck_.

They’d mate. One bite, that was all it would take. He’d never much cared for the idea of mating before. He’d seen plenty of mated Alphas go soft in the head. Lovelorn, knotsick fools.

Perhaps he was the fool now. He wanted to sink his teeth and his knot into her, and for her to reciprocate with her own omegan bite. Clamp on his jugular until she broke the skin, taste his blood on her tongue, claim him for herself. 

He knew then that he was doomed and damned. 

There could be no empty-handed return to Snoke. But the thought of anyone but him having her made him want to die.

Surely there was a third option.

. . .

Rey detected him not long after she set out from the Hollow in the Rock. The air was crisp and still, yet even without a breeze to carry his scent, her sensitive nose could pick it up.

Chimney smoke, roasting chestnuts, fresh snowfall.

Scents of home and a childhood that had not been Rey's. But one she'd yearned for. It seemed possible to her that she’d be able to pick up that scent anywhere, no matter how cold the trail had gone—not that his was, it was clear to her that he was not far off—and no matter how stagnant the air might be. Like she would always be able to sense him; like she was born to sense him.

It was clear to her now: she understood that the scent she’d detected the other day—the one she’d deluded herself into believing came from the Hollow, or from far away—had been him along. 

For though she was sure he fancied himself a stealthy hunter, Rey had been alone in the wilderness for months, and each crunch of twigs or leaves beneath his boots sounded out like a bugle in the quiet morning.

There was little doubt in her mind that she was being followed by a large, heavy-footed and lumbering brute who smelled too good to be trusted.

So. The Alpha Executioner had tracked her from his fortress into the wilds of southern Illinois.

Why?

A lurid thrill went through her as she contemplated that question, but Rey frowned down at her own boots, forcing one in front of the other. Foolishness. Base, craven foolishness. He was a murder, a bad man, a bad _ Alpha_.

She would have nothing to do with him if she could manage it; Rose and Leia were one thing, but Rey knew all too well the dangers Alphas could bring.

The damage they could do.

Their ruthlessness.

Memories of London threatened to sweep up and overtake her so she began to hum softly to herself, the same old nursery rhymes. Fear turned her stomach and made her legs wobble, but she gripped the shoulder strap of her pack tightly in one hand, and her rifle with the other, and soldiered on.

“One for sorrow, two for joy…” she warbled, shakily.

It was better than listening to his footfalls.

. . .

That evening, when the sun had disappeared behind the trees in the west and the shadows in the forest grew too long to navigate with ease, she forced herself to feign oblivious indifference while she set up her lean-to and built a small fire. She could feel a pair of hungry eyes on her as she prepared her supper: the last of the venison and some of the bounty the Resistance had gifted her, fried potatoes with salt and oil and cabbage. But she made no acknowledgement of the interloper.

After she’d finished eating and cleaned up, she crawled under her lean-to, laid back on her deerskin, folded her hands on her belly, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

While she waited, she smeared her decoction over her glands and double checked the blade of her hunting knife. Sharp as sin, sharp enough to handle whatever might come next.

Good.

Only when gathering clouds swallowed up the moon and the frost of late Autumn brought a hush to the forest did she act, crawling swiftly from her lean-to, pulling it down and packing it up along with her deerskin and all her other things.

Then, silent as a winter hare, she was off.

. . .

But by midday she could sense him again, following at a distance. His scent was heavy in her nose, and there was something sluggish about the blood in her veins, like her body was conserving energy, preparing for something. Slowing her down.

Demanding a battle or a tryst.

With a shuddering sigh, Rey stopped in a clearing in the trees, dropped her pack to the ground, took out her antler-hewn knife—tucking it into the top of her boot—and her Winchester rifle, into which she loaded with two of her three remaining bullets.

She could take him down with only two. One was preferable, in fact. Yes. She _ had _to take him down with one. Who knew when she might find more? With a pang, she thought of the armory she'd glimpsed in the Hollow. If only she'd thought to ask the Resistance for bullets, or simply steal some for herself. If only she had not been lulled into complacency by a week of having a soft bed and regular hot meals. Rey huffed out a breath through her nostrils.

No matter.

She pivoted, pointing the rifle at the innocent trees back the way she had come, swinging the barrel to and fro.

“Well?” she shouted, at nothing. 

A few dangling branches danced in the cold air. A squirrel ran past; she ignored it, though it would have made a decent supper. From somewhere in the distance, she heard the faint burbling whisper of a creek.

“I know you’re out there! Stop following me! Come do your worst or… or… go away!”

It took a minute. Maybe a few hundred paces off, far enough back that the shadows of the forest had hidden him, he emerged from behind a tree, clad as he was before, in his ridiculous bearskin coat and pork pie hat. He was far enough back that she had to strain her eyes to make out his face, no longer covered by the kerchief, which now hung around his neck.

He walked steadily at a lumbering pace, neither rushing nor dragging his feet. His eyes pinned her where she stood; they did not waver from hers. They were hypnotic, and that frightened Rey, so she placed her finger on the trigger. It was only when he drew closer, close enough that she could see the moles dotting his angular, incongruous features, that he looked down at her hands and spied her trigger finger.

He came to a stop, just on the far edge of the clearing.

Then he slid his shaggy coat to the side and pulled a heretofore hidden pistol from his shoulder holster, but he did not cock the hammer and he did not aim it at her. It dangled loosely in his big hand, looking like a toy.

“Don’t.” 

Rey wished that her voice did not shake, ever so slightly, on that one word. She cleared her throat. _ Show him no weakness, _ she commanded herself. _ Give him no openings. _

“Omega,” he said softly, “there’s no need to fight.”

“Like hell!”

“What are you doing out here? Pretty young Omega all alone by herself, headed south on unsafe trails. It’s foolhardy.”

“I don’t recall asking your opinion, but I _ will _ask that you kindly keep it to yourself.”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You won’t have to, if you stay right where you are and come no closer,” she warned.

For a long, fraught moment, they stared at each other.

“I saw you in the fortress,” Rey hissed at him. “I _ saw _what you did—what you are.”

A hint of something forlorn passed over his features; she felt a pang of déjà vu, looking at the expression. But before she could analyze that, with painstaking slowness, the Alpha lifted his foot and took a single step forward.

A challenge.

There was no hesitation on her part; she was as good as her word. She pulled the trigger, grazing his left side, where his shoulder holster had been hidden by his coat.

She’d spent years as a nurse by Sister Dosmit’s side during the Catastrophe. She knew bloody well where a man would die by bullet wound and where a man might survive a bullet wound.

And the truth was this: she’d aimed for the latter. But there was no time to analyze that, not now.

With a sharp cry, he crumpled to his knees. It was dissatisfying, her response to seeing him in pain. It was not the triumph she’d hoped for. She felt guilt, and she hated herself for it.

“Stay. Down.”

The executioner lifted his eyes to hers. _ There _was that fury she’d seen before, there was that bloodlust. He was angry with her.

Something inside of her quaked, wanting desperately to fix it. Soothe him, mend his wounds, show him that she could be a good Omega, could be _ his _good Omega.

Rey nearly choked on the bile that rose up her throat; she turned her head to the side and spat in disgust.

It was all the opening he needed. One arm wrapped around his side, no doubt holding the shredded skin around his ribs together, he launched himself up at her, growling, pistol hanging limply from his free hand, as though his intention was not to shoot but simply to charge her like a bull, squash her like a bug.

That she could not abide. The Winchester rifle had a repeating action, so she pumped the lever, took her aim, and fired again.

This time, she just missed his right shoulder, at the top of his bicep. There was a smoking hole in the arm of his coat, but very little blood poured forth.

Twice she had shot at him, from a close range, and twice she had not mortally wounded him, not even close. There would be time for recrimination later, though Rey already had a sinking suspicion as to _ exactly _why she had not shot to kill.

_ Alpha_, she wanted to croon. _ Alpha, I’m sorry. Forgive me my trespasses, Alpha. _

“No!” she bellowed, though he presented little threat to her now. “No, no, no!” 

The Alpha had fallen back to the ground, winded, surprised, wheezing with pain. His brow furrowed at her outburst. Rey’s lips trembled. Her hands, too. His blood from the first wound was spreading like a scarlet inkblot under his vest and suspenders and dingy shirt.

“I warned you,” she said to him, in a voice so flat she did not recognize it for her own. “I said come no closer.”

He grimaced. “You did.” 

After dabbing gingerly at the wound in his side, he raised his hand to stare at his bloody fingers. He seemed horrified by the sight of them.

“Old Alpha blood,” he mumbled, blanching. “No, no, no…” 

With a groan, he was shoving at the ground, heaving clumsily, until he was once more on his feet.

“Omega.”

“Don’t!” she yelped, shrill and high, a whining note of panic.

“This is no country for lost Omegas.” There was nothing conniving about his manner, which confused her; he gazed at her earnestly, almost beseechingly.

She scowled at him. “Good thing I’m not lost, then.”

“You’re… a stranger to these parts… don't… understand…" The Alpha didn’t look good; he was pale as a bedsheet and did not seem to be standing all that confidently. In fact, he had begun to sway.

“And you’re a murderous snake!” she snarled. 

Not a second later, he hurled himself towards her again. “Come here!” he thundered, but he sounded tired, fainter than he had before.

Her reaction was purely instinct; the moment he was within striking distance, she pulled her knife from its sheath and swung it at his face. He reeled back but not quickly enough. A gash opened up in his pale skin; she’d gotten him above the brow, and then her blade had dragged downwards, just missing his eye, but slashing open a line from the bridge of his nose to his jugular. 

It was not deep, but oh, how it bled. The blood ran down into his shirt, bathing his nose and pretty lips, meeting the blood from the wound at his ribs.

He let out an unearthly howl. Dropping his pistol, he raised his free hand to grab his face. Again he stumbled back, one step, another, then a root impeded his progress and he went down hard. Sprawled out once more, he did not make another attempt to stand.

Those dark eyes of his never left Rey’s. He stared at her, shocked. Aghast, perhaps. Outraged, she was sure. 

But there was something else in his expression. If Rey had been more seasoned in the rites of mating, she might have said with confidence that he appeared infatuated. As it was, she could only guess. Mostly, she thought, he looked like a soon-to-be dead man.

Whether she had finally robbed him of his notions as to her independence, she also did not know, but she had no interest in staying to find out.

Without another word, she wiped her blade in the hoarfrost-encrusted leaves on the ground then tucked it back in its sheath. His pistol came next, hastily shoved under her belt. Then, knapsack heaved onto her back once more, emptied rifle in hand, she turned.

And she fled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://allpoetry.com/poem/8505293-Despair-by-Anne-Sexton)? 😏
> 
> Weirdly, I don't have a lot of links for this chapter?
> 
> [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsHJgh7pBCM) is a video of a man shooting a Winchester 1892.
> 
> [This](https://www.archivesofpathology.org/doi/full/10.1043/1543-2165%282006%29130%5B1283%3APPOGW%5D2.0.CO%3B2) is an interesting article on the pathology of gunshot wounds. Are the wounds Kylo received 100% accurate? Well, I'll say this. At the time I wrote this, I did some looking around and it seemed like they could be. Unfortunately, I didn't save any of those links and to go back through all of the many many months' worth of blogs and websites I have researched through in search of them feels very daunting. So let's say this: if they are, cool. If they're not, er, he's an Alpha, which means his, uh... skin is, uh... tougher than most. Or something.
> 
> I think that is... it? Weird. This feels weird. Like I'm forgetting something. Am I forgetting something? It's possible. If I am, I will come back and edit this later. If not, thank you for reading! 💓


	7. Dolce ridens, dulce loquens she shaves her legs until they gleam like petrified mammoth-tusk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Hi again. I need to issue another violence warning on this chapter, and this one's a bit more serious than the others. It's gun violence, and there is some gnarly description of wounds, and if you do not want to read that but you want to continue the story, you should skip to the last line once you see: _She cocked it and tried again._**
> 
> I'm so excited to share this art from the brilliant [House of Finches](https://twitter.com/HouseOfFinches); she's made two Twitter threads illustrating passages from the last chapter, one of [Rey sensing Kylo](https://twitter.com/HouseOfFinches/status/1176323630453723138) and one of [Kylo receiving his orders from Snoke](https://twitter.com/HouseOfFinches/status/1176560032860778497) and they are both INCREDIBLE. Thank you again!! 💕

**The statuesque alphic woman seated in the parlor of Saint Padmé’s Home for Foundling Omegas sits as still as a marble figure, waiting patiently while the nuns bring out a tea service and perch themselves on the faded davenports and armchairs of the rarely-used room, eager to make pleasant small talk with her.**

**She carries herself with understated elegance; her attire is paradoxically opulent and modest. Her chic tailleur ensemble, both knee-length jacket and ankle-length skirt, are a restrained greyish mauve, loosely draped silk, while the cocoon coat she has on over it is a lustrous raven sable. Her hair gives some hint of her eccentricity: a lavender-tinted marcelled bob, topped with a silver hairpiece. But somehow, it suits her kind-looking face and large, limpid blue eyes.**

**The Baroness Holdo. She is Saint Padmé’s most generous donor; her approval of the home’s facilities and child-rearing practices is essential for the continuance of their operation. **

**Several of the children, Henrietta included, are brought into the parlor to speak with the baroness. They curtsy, then stand at attention. There have been numerous lectures in the weeks leading up to this visit about not gawking or speaking out of turn, though the very young ones do both. They are escorted away while in polite monotone, Henrietta and Namenthe and Quinar and Devi—all ten years old now, and deeply mature in their own minds—answer the Baroness’s perfunctory inquiries about schooling and chores and mealtimes.**

**Later, after they have been dismissed but before the performances in the common room begin, Henrietta seeks out Sister Dosmit. She is uncomfortable in the scratchy, stiff fabric of the frilly, old-fashioned pinafore the nuns have selected for her to wear and she fusses with the lace hem of the sleeve as she tugs on the nun’s habit.**

**“I feel ridiculous,” she grumbles.**

**Dosmit turns, repressing her chuckle, and gives Rey a solemn nod. “But you ** ** _look_ ** ** quite charming.”**

**“I'm nervous,” she confesses, holding up her shaking hands to Dosmit to see. “How shall I play when I can't steady myself? My tummy hurts.”**

**“You'll be brilliant,” Dosmit assures her. She takes hold of Henrietta's thin shoulders and fixes her with a confident grin. “You've known Sonatina in C Major by heart for months, and you play it beautifully. All you have to do is focus on the keys and notes, on your tempo, on that one tricky bit with the F sharp. Don't pay any mind to anyone else in the room.”**

**Henrietta shakes her head. “I thought our music was just for us? What about the joy of hearing ourselves play?”**

**Dosmit only sighs and turns back to the plait she is making in little Bebe’s thick auburn curls.**

**“Sister Dosmit,” whines Henrietta, “I don’t want to play for ** ** _her_****. I… I don’t like the way she smells.”**

**The nun’s reply is tart, on the verge of reproachful. “She is a kind lady who simply wants to see that her money is being put to good use. We have mouths to feed, Henrietta.”**

**“So we give her our ** ** _music_****? Is everything in my life to be for the pleasure of some old Alpha?”**

**Pulling a ribbon from her pocket, Dosmit ties off the end of Bebe’s braid. “Go on, you. Join the others,” she bids the young girl, and watches as Bebe toddles off in the direction of the other first-years. Then she turns back to Henrietta. “You may have to bow and scrape at times,” she concedes calmly. "Such is the life of the Omega."**

**Henrietta blows out a frustrated groan, to which Dosmit holds up a hand.**

**“But you do ** ** _not_ ** ** have to smile at her with your eyes. And you do ** ** _not_ ** ** have to put your soul into the music you play for her, nor the words you speak to her.”**

**“But what—”**

**“You need only be polite and presentable. That’s all she wants to see, anyway—good manners and good health, mental and physical. She is a ** ** _kind _ ** **Alpha. Kinder than most.”**

**“She’s still an Alpha,” mutters Henrietta.**

**Exasperated, the nun rolls her eyes. “There are many battles out there, my dear. When the time comes, you’ll know what to do—”**

**“Trust my heart and my gut,” finishes Henrietta, having heard this refrain many times.**

**“That’s right.” Dosmit nods approvingly. “Choose the battles that are most important to you. Throw yourself into them. Do what you can for the rest, but do not spread yourself too thin. Do ****_not_**** lose** **yourself to the war, Henrietta. If you do, you are no good to anyone.”**

* * *

Kylo laid where she’d left him, sprawled out on the forest floor, for quite some time. He watched the vermilion canopy overhead sway under a sky the ominous color of raw wool, listening to her flee until the sound of footfalls became indistinguishable from the rustle of the leaves and the flute-like call of a nearby wood thrush, an incessant _ eeh-oh-lay, eeh-oh-lay _melody, that seared itself into his brain. He felt pain, searing pain, from where his side and arm had been slashed by her bullet and his face by her knife, and he felt himself growing tired, no doubt from the blood loss. But he also felt the strangest sense of bemused serenity. 

She was so fierce, that little Omega. So brave. So… strong.

His eyelids grew heavy.

That’s when he began to wonder if he might be in mortal danger.

To rouse himself, to force himself to sit upright then stagger to his feet, to stumble towards the faint sound of running water, seemed a herculean task. Her narrowed hazel eyes stared back at him, though, in the knots of old oak trees, in the rocks, in the leaves. They drove him forward.

At the tiny creek, he undressed himself with clumsy, fumbling, blood-soaked fingers, then sat in its shallow current, gritting his teeth against the water’s icy bite. What surprised him, when he got a good look at the damage by his ribs, was how insubstantial it really was. It had bled like a bastard, yes, the skin was raw and mangled, true, his shirt was ruined, indubitably, but the leather holster had taken the brunt of the bullet’s impact.

Of the knife wound that ran across his face, he could not say the same. While he’d laid there in the leaves, it had continued to bleed; his hair was matted, his cheeks and jaw and neck all caked brown-red. It took time to get himself clean. He rinsed out the gash gingerly by lowering his face into the stream, hissing from the sting as he did so. But where the wound felt deepest—the fleshy bit of muscle over his cheekbone—there was no way for him to stitch it closed. Same went for the bullet wound. All he could do was get them clean and bind them as best he could with strips of dingy cotton made from his shirtsleeves.

The day was growing colder, not warmer, he observed, though his perception might have been influenced by the glacial temperature of the creek. He was shivering, skin tinted blue, by the time he crawled out of the water and tugged his heavy clothes back on.

Damn these wicked winters anyway; each year since the Catastrophe, the winds had blown ever sharper, the snow had fallen ever heavier, and the season had lasted ever longer. He’d thought that the end had come with the raging blaze of war, with that God forsaken forest in Argonne, but now he was less certain.

Perhaps it was not flame but rather frost that would take them. All those who’d survived to this point, anyway.

As if on cue, a single snowdrop slipped through the leaves, performing a graceful pirouette as it made its way down to a nearby rock. It melted immediately but another followed, then another.

He would need to build a fire.

A fire could warm him, revive him, and heat his blade. Then he would tackle the unpleasant task of cauterizing the worst of his two wounds.

The other, he resolved, with the last tinge of vanity he had left, he would pack with late-blooming yarrow and, if it kept falling, snow. And he would pray for minimal scarring.

. . . 

She fled, but not with the panic that had driven her from the fortress. 

This was not even necessarily fear as she had felt then; what she had witnessed on that wooden stage had been outside the scope of what she could understand, which had made her afraid. But the executioner? Him, she understood just _ fine_.

So it was not the terror of enigmatic evil but grim certainty of a known enemy that drove her on.

That in and of itself was familiar.

When she'd seen him behead that Alpha, the worst imaginable scenario in the world had been meeting him. Yet she hadn't merely survived their encounter, she'd come out on top. The weight of his pistol hanging in her belt was her proof and her reward.

He was as good as dead, wasn't he? No, no. He was. And she felt no guilt for having done the deed. She did not worry for him. Didn't wonder if he'd live to see the next cold dawn. Didn't look back, not once, wasn't even tempted to.

Lot’s wife, and all that.

The lies she told herself as the snow began to fall and the path sloped upwards, up into and among the great rockface karsts and cliffs of the Shawnee lands, were very convincing.

By the time the ground was laced with white, she truly believed them.

. . .

Shoddy. 

The cauterization of his bullet wound was shoddily done. 

As he worked, gnawing on the piece of bark wedged between his molars and groaning out a strangled scream as though volume could counteract pain, he longed for the army medics, who would've drugged him, stitched him up, and sent him back out, right as rain.

The hot blade of his broadsword pressing against the thin skin over his ribs hurt more than any scrape or bruise or bullet graze he’d received during the war. Hurt more than waking to find his mad monk uncle attempting to cut short his life while he slept, hurt more than his mother letting his telegrams go unanswered before he’d shipped out, hurt more than discovering, once he’d deserted from the Great Victorless War, that the only one who would have him was Morfran fucking Snoke.

Hurt more than realizing that his parents had been firmly entrenched on the _ other _side of that war, supporting the Resistance’s efforts by land and by sea.

Hurt more than discovering that the fighting and the carnage had all been for naught; no one had won, no order had been brought to the world. Rather, the sickness had taken so many that by the time the ash settled, the only thing left for him to come home to had been abandoned, burning wastelands. He'd gone to war a green boy, barely understanding his own cause beyond childhood memories of a stabler time and a willful teenage rebelliousness that led him to dismiss all the beliefs of his family as erroneous, all those of Morfran Snoke as the real truth. And he'd returned a pariah and a coward, with no one to welcome him home. No one but Snoke.

Kylo dismissed those memories. He anchored himself in the here and now with the searing pain, doing what he must. He knew all too well that putrid and gangrenous flesh stunk worse than that which had been burned; it killed faster, too. 

This was all he had, a hot sword and his desperation to see the Omega again. To demand answers from her. Why hadn't she killed him? Where was she from? Why was she here? Where was she going?

What could he do to convince her to trust him?

. . .

"But why should she?" he muttered to himself the next morning, after he'd managed to steal some sleep with the aid of a small half-buried cave and a few good pieces of wood that had smoldered through the long night.

The snow was halfway up his shins by the time he set out after her; the trail was not as easy to follow as it had been. He had not eaten since he'd finished his hard tack in the woods outside the Hollow in the Rock and his stomach growled loudly at the memory of her fried potatoes and cabbage.

She was probably a day ahead of him. She had extra help disguising her scent with the weather, she was better fed and unwounded. He was weak, he’d been shot and stabbed, he was starving.

But Kylo _ burned _ for her.

He’d lived so long with so many unanswered questions, and she seemed so very sure of herself.

That was enough to push him onward, one foot in front of the other, through the rising snowdrifts.

. . .

The rye was gone.

It’d been foolish to break into it after she’d set up her lean-to by the strange yellow-grey light of the snowy late afternoon, but Rey had done so well for herself, hidden inside a ringed thicket of dense, prickly holly bushes, and she’d decided she deserved some kind of celebration for besting the Alpha executioner. For making it this far. A reminder that she was alive.

As a result, however, she’d slept like the dead through the whole night and late into the morning, then awakened with a throbbing headache and cotton-dry mouth.

Her estimation that it was late morning when she woke was just that, an estimation, as she’d emerged from her shelter to find the sky swathed in thick, heavy clouds heaping down snow upon her. She tilted her face upwards, observed that the snow had begun to stick to the rocky landscape and was rapidly burying her lean-to. She felt a cruel wind blow through the trees, bringing with it a wet gust of snowflakes, and quickly drew back inside.

Here it was relatively dry, warmed from her own body, and protected. Safe.

She hadn’t intended to let her eyes sink shut, to slip back into her unseemly dreams of the dead Alpha, which now included him on his knees for her, purring _ ‘Omega’ _in that deep, velveteen voice of his.

But her mind was fuzzy from the last of the rye. So she let it happen.

. . .

Rey did awaken properly a few hours later, and even got herself together enough—after employing some freshly fallen snow to rinse out her mouth and cool her overheated face—to pack up and trudge a few more miles south.

Perhaps her week with the Resistance, sleeping in a feather bed and spending her days playing cards and watching the sludgy waters of the Naberrie Creek pass her by, had made her soft. Perhaps exhaustion from the grueling pace she’d been keeping was finally catching up with her. Perhaps the adrenaline from her battle with the dead Alpha executioner was finally depleted, creating in its wake a deficit of energy.

Perhaps it was simply the dark skies, the blowing winds, and the rising snow.

In any case, after only a couple hours, she was exhausted. Upon discovering a small cave at the foot of a cliff, she deemed the distance she’d marched satisfactory and settled in for the evening.

After managing to gather a few armfuls of kindling and logs in a dense thicket nearby, she built a decent fire. By its dancing orange light, she curled up with Doctor Skywalker’s tome. Opening to one of its most dog-eared, faded pages, she reread her favorite passage for the hundredth or five hundredth time.

The language was formal, almost to the point of incomprehensibility for Rey, who, like most at Saint Padmé’s, had never progressed past her eighth year of schooling. The delivery of the message was meandering, leisurely almost. But she still read the last sentence aloud, as she often had before, in times of doubt or trepidation.

“Thus, it can be reasoned that though the extra chromosome may determine a person’s physiology and may exert some influence upon their behavior and temperament,” she recited, to the cave walls and the fluttering flames and her deerskin blanket, “ultimately the human soul of these alphic and omegan individuals remains their own, unhampered by hormones and the deviated new biology that has emerged, free to be melded as it will by the forces of good or evil, as the individual sees fit. It must be stated, here and now, in the most strident and vehement of tones, that an individual’s designation or lack thereof does not forecast their moral, ethical, or dispositional makeup.

Stated simply, designation is not destiny.”

She sighed with contentment and huddled closer to the fire.

. . .

It was late the next day when that knocking at the attic door of her mind came again, that shivery, goosefleshed intuition speaking to her in a language beyond words. She gave a sniff of the air just to be certain, but really it was just a formality; Rey understood now what these signs meant.

Whom they heralded.

It was _him_. Behind her, still a good way back, but gaining with haste.

“No,” she seethed, under her breath. How could this be?

Why hadn’t she shot to kill in the first place, a bullet squarely where she knew it would remove him from this earth? Why had she dithered? Doubt wracked her. 

“No!” she repeated, but it did no good.

There had been blood on his shirt. So much of it. She’d sliced him open from nose to neck. She had not watched him die, but… 

Truly, she had not believed him capable of ranging further. Even if in her heart she had not _really_ thought him dead, it was inconceivable that he was still moving south, and so _ swiftly_. Rey felt fury; with him for shattering the deception she’d labored to convince herself of, and with herself for creating that deception in the first place. 

She thought over the last day, the time she had wasted sleeping and drinking, reading and wallowing, so convinced of her victory, so steeped in the truth she had established.

No use crying over spilled milk now. She spat into the snow. “Damn it.”

Sparing only a moment to load the Winchester with her last bullet, she picked up her pace.

. . .

But a hastened pace meant perspiration, and fatigue, and a need for water.

Soon enough, she came upon a spring, its burbling crystalline waters flowing down through the snow, not yet frozen by the precipitous drop in temperature.

It was while she was kneeling, head bent down to the slippery wet rocks over which the spring flowed, that she heard his booted feet crunching through the snow.

Damn him to hell and back, he’d caught up with her.

She drank her share, paying his looming presence no mind, though her hands had begun to tremble. If she was destined to die on this afternoon, she’d do so with a refreshed mouth.

Then she rose to her feet and turned to face him.

The Alpha executioner lingered about twenty paces away, listing slightly. His gloved hand rested on the snow-dusted trunk of the beech tree beside him. His face was partially obscured by a strip of grubby white cotton he’d used as a bandage. It caused his hat to sit at a comically jaunty angle atop his head.

For a second time, they stared at each other.

“Leave me alone,” she growled at last. “Unless you’re looking for another bullet hole to match the first.”

She pulled the rifle to her body and aimed at him, finger on the trigger, to let him know she meant business. His only response was a tired-looking nod, and then he hung his head, as though he did not possess the energy to hold it up.

There were dark shadows below his closed eyes, she noticed. His eyelashes were long and dark; they fanned out over those shadows. And stubble was emerging along his jaw. It was patchy, scraggly. Not the full beard she’d always assumed all male Alphas could grow in only a few days. She pondered that for an instant before coming to her senses.

“I mean it, don’t come any closer!” she warned.

He raised his free hand. Was he attempting to halt _ her _from approaching? Or perhaps to surrender? He appeared to be frozen like that, hand hanging in midair and head bowed.

Rey was confounded. He’d made no further move to approach nor retreat; did she have it in her to shoot at a man who was not a threat to her?

_ Was _he a threat to her?

“I’m going,” she said, for lack of anything better to say.

Another tired nod.

She took one step back, rifle still aimed at him. Then another.

When she’d gone a few steps, he looked up. And took one step forward. Furious, Rey charged towards him until the end of the rifle’s barrel nearly touched the dark blood stain under his vest.

This time he sank to his knees, both hands raised in the air above his head.

“Don’t shoot.” His voice was silk on sandpaper, a hoarse rasp. “Please.”

“I _ said _don’t come any closer.”

“I didn’t—you’d moved away.”

She scoffed. “I’m not to be trifled with.”

A wry grin tugged at the edge of his full lips. “That much I know, Omega.”

Was he teasing her?

Did he think this was a _ game_? Her hammering heart was nearly deafening in her ears; how _dare_ he?

“Don’t follow me,” she snapped, as she began to back away again. 

“Wait!”

Rey shook her head at him. “No tricks, I mean it!”

“Shh!” he hissed.

His appearance gave her pause; eyes gone wide and wild, whites showing all the way around his dark irises, and tangible panic in how his brows lifted towards his snow-crusted hat, how his gloved hands were reaching for her.

Then she heard it.

Under the sound of the wind, under the beating of her own heart: the groaning crunch of snow under a heavy weight, and the irritable, chuffing noises of a great beast.

She gasped.

“Slowly now,” came the Alpha’s whisper. “Turn around.”

Barely breathing, shaking so hard she thought her bones might jump out her body, Rey took infinitesimal side steps until she’d performed half a revolution, and could behold the creature. The tip of the Winchester’s rifle nearly touched its dark nose.

It had a large head, with a wide, fluffy face, which narrowed into a long snout. Its lips were curled, and it released a great snort then pawed at the snow with one of its massive forelegs. Rey’s eyes were drawn to its claws; they were longer than her own fingers and razor sharp.

A bear.

It snorted again, twisting its head, and Rey spotted a solid hump of blonde-brown fur rising up on its massive back.

There was some small part of her mind that could not comprehend—one that was not ready for death, that was angry at this inconvenience—but there was another small part of her that was surprised it had taken this long to encounter such a beast.

Mostly, however, she was paralyzed by her own fear. On four legs, the bear was the same height as Rey. It was staring into her eyes. Its own gleamed like golden rings in the dull light.

And it was angry, too. At her. Perhaps for standing in its way.

“Take a step back. _ Slowly_.”

Giddy relief shot through her. Rey very nearly let out a hysterical laugh at the Alpha’s command; in her fear, she’d momentarily forgotten of his existence.

She did as he’d told her.

“Shouldn't _ be _ grizzlies this far south,” she heard him mutter. “These _ fucking _winters.”

There was foam at the edges of the bear's mouth. Her gun was still raised. Errantly, she wondered if she could make the shot.

Snow continued to fall as woman warily eyed bear and bear warily eyed woman.

Then the beast pawed the ground again and opened its mouth to release a thunderous roar.

The roar was fierce. Its claws were so sharp, so very sharp, its yellowed incisors and black gums and gaping maw so hungry, so bottomless. A whimper escaped her; it could not be helped.

“Take another step back,” hissed the Alpha.

But she did not. She could not. She would _ not _die passively; not after all she’d survived to get to this point. With shaking hands, she hoisted the rifle until it was aligned with the bear’s golden left eye. Took a deep breath. Put her finger on the trigger.

His whispered, “Don’t!” was eclipsed by another roar; the bear vaulted up onto its hind legs, immense front limbs raised up high above its head. Standing that way, the thing must’ve easily been over seven feet tall. Again it bellowed, a fearful racket.

Rey froze. In horror, in shock, in fear. She froze where she stood, unable to breathe, unable to move. The heavy body came down, and with its downswing, the bear swatted the rifle from her hands.

There was barely time to think after that. One second the bear was lunging towards her as she fumbled for the pistol in her belt and in the next, a large body was springing past her, throwing itself into the bear’s path.

It bellowed again, its front legs came up, wrapping around the broad, strong body of the Alpha executioner like a lethal embrace. The Alpha was still holding his massive sword at the ready but the bear’s hug restricted his movement, and he could not bury the blade in the bear’s chest as he’d obviously meant to. She watched those frightful claws sink into the man’s back, through the bearskin—idly, distraught, she wondered if the bear worn by the man had been this one’s kin—and then it opened its huge mouth again, ready to sink its teeth into his neck.

Rey did not take the time to think. She did not consider the origins of the executioner, she did not weigh his good deeds against his bad. If those powerful jaws were to bite down on the man’s neck, he would surely die.

Some urge inside her, something possessive and feral and greedy, overrode her fear. She would not allow it to happen if it was in her power to stop it.

Pulling his pistol loose of her belt, she raised it towards the bear’s eye. The two, man and bear, were grappling, and it would take a miracle to land a shot on the bear without hitting the Alpha. With a prayer sent up to Saint Padmé, she took the first shot.

Clipped his ear.

It was hard to say who yowled more angrily at that miss, Rey or the bear.

She cocked the gun and tried again. This time, she grazed its shoulder. Yowling with frustration, she tried a third shot: this time, the bullet ripped through part of its skull and eye socket, enough to frighten it, enough to _ hurt _it. 

Grievously. 

Unnerved, it did not resist when the Alpha pushed it backwards. It sunk down onto all fours and staggered for a moment, its left eye now nothing more than bloody pulp.

The Alpha backpedaled, nearly into Rey. She could see the blood through his coat and shirt from where the bear’s claws had punctured his skin. He held his great sword out before him, as though ready to defend her. Together, Rey and the Alpha stood there for a long moment, both breathing heavily. The bear was also panting; it chuffed out pained, whimpering groans. Steam rose from its snout, mingling with the driving snow.

Rey raised the pistol, thumbed the hammer back, and fired.

_ Click_.

The cylinder was empty.

In an instant, as if spurred on by that empty cylinder, the bear seemed to settle on a response: rage. Their only warning was a paw stomped into the white drifts and another eat-shattering roar. Its remaining good eye locked onto them. 

The creature was wounded. Enraged. And they were the culprits.

As it charged, Rey sank to her knees, reaching towards a glint of silver in the snow. And as it swiped at the Alpha, batting the sword from his hands, she wrested the rifle free from the snow that had already begun to bury it. The bear swung again, slashing through the singed sleeve of the Alpha’s coat. It made an annoyed, whining growl and the Alpha, fool that he was, growled back. Grabbing onto its teeth with his gloved hands, he opened its jaw wider, temporarily holding it off.

“Omega, _ do _something!” he screamed back at her. “Shoot it again!”

Rey raised the Winchester towards the bear’s head. From her low vantage point, she could see the back of its throat, so she aimed for that. There was no time for a proper prayer, only a desperate plea to anyone listening that she be allowed to see the dawn, and then she did not think of anything except the thing's dark gullet.

She pulled the trigger.

Over the bear’s snarling and snorting, the gunshot sounded out, making her ears ring. It was louder, she thought, than when she’d shot the Alpha. Louder than every time she’d used the Winchester to hunt. Louder than the sound of London on fire. Louder than the bombings, louder than the weeping, louder than all the death, all the horror. It was as if the momentousness of this bullet being put in this bear’s head needed a sound of appropriate volume to match.

Like it was the beginning or the end, and only time would tell which.

The beast, now nothing more than a lifeless mass, sank where it had stood. It took the blood-bathed Alpha down with it. He scurried out from under, dragging himself away towards his dropped sword, leaving a ragged crimson trail in the white snow. Rey paid him hardly any mind.

She could not look away from the bear. Its once-noble head was a mess of blood and viscera; steam still rose off its magnificent blonde-brown fur and gaping mouth. But its chest did not rise and fall. Its good eye was unblinking, unseeing.

The bear was dead, felled by the last of her ammunition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://genius.com/Adrienne-rich-snapshots-of-a-daughter-in-law-annotated)?
> 
> Some info about the [clothes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1910s_in_Western_fashion) Baroness Holdo was wearing and about her [hairstyle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcelling).
> 
> [Beech trees](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fagus_grandifolia) are lovely, no? [Holly](https://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/trees/plants/am_holly.html), too. Plus, a very pretty and informative [pamphlet](https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd575423.pdf) about the biodiversity in the Shawnee forests!
> 
> The [wood thrush](https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/wood_thrush) is a cute little bird with a very interesting song.
> 
> How do you [cauterize a wound](https://www.stuffyoushouldknow.com/blogs/stuff-knows-guide-proper-adulthood-cauterize-wound.htm)? [This should only be done in emergencies and fanfiction.]
> 
> Some good information about what to do during a [bear encounter](http://www.bearsmart.com/play/bear-encounters/). Again, do not do what Rey and Kylo did. That is a fanfic-only kind of thing.
> 
> What is a [grizzly bear](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grizzly_bear), anyway?
> 
> Finally, a source of inspiration that I forgot to mention in the notes of chapter 1: [Within the Wires](http://www.nightvalepresents.com/withinthewires), an incredibly well-written and engrossing podcast about a post-apocalyptic distopia that goes in a very different direction from this one, but from which I borrowed a few world-building ideas!
> 
> Okay, I think that's all for me. Thank you for reading! 💞


	8. Though you may wander sweeter lands, You will not soon forget my hands, Nor yet the way I held my head, Nor all the tremulous things I said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi hey hello I can't believe how wildly lucky I am, to have not only an amazing beta reader in [Kat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryminded/pseuds/delia-pavorum), a super talented writer whose stuff you should absolutely go read if you have not already, but also such funny and perceptive readers and artists who have created things for this story. I am so grateful for all of you. 
> 
> So first I want to share [this](https://twitter.com/AlhenaCrimson/status/1177559908910325760) fantastic rendering of the battle between the bear and our heroes, by the amazingly talented [AlhenaCrimson](https://twitter.com/AlhenaCrimson).
> 
> And another [HouseofFinches](https://twitter.com/HouseOfFinches) [masterpiece](https://twitter.com/HouseOfFinches/status/1177768682946211846), this one a depiction of Kylo and Rey embracing in her dreams, with Kylo on his knees [as he should be lmao].
> 
> And finally, this incredible [ye olde timey drawing](https://twitter.com/selunchen/status/1178237131753439232) that looks like it could've been ripped straight from Rey's diary, done by the genius [selunchen](https://twitter.com/selunchen). If you are not following these artists on twitter and tumblr, I highly recommend that you do!! They create gorgeous, wonderful stuff. 💓

**On a rainy Sunday afternoon when Henrietta is ten or so, she chooses to while away the dreary hours by laying on the floor in Dosmit's small attic bedroom instead of joining the other children in the elaborate game of tag they have devised. Dosmit's door is open; out in the narrow hallway, she can them see running to and fro, screaming with delight. Dosmit sits in her faded armchair, checking on them from time to time while her clever fingers turn yarn and two needles into a jumper.**

**The orange kitten that lives in the alley beside the home has wandered in out of the rain, and little Henrietta, not having the heart to return the creature to the misery of the drowned world outside, has smuggled it up to Dosmit's room.**

**She flits a bit of marigold-hued yarn in its damp face. It watches her with a tilted head and wide blue eyes.**

**Sighing, Henrietta concedes defeat. She leans back against the side of Sister Dosmit's cot and plucks the Pist-o-liter from the nun's desk. Making soft 'pew-pew' sound effects, she pretends she is shooting bandits, like the famous alphic outlaw, Annie Oakley.**

**Dosmit glances up from her knitting at the sound; she smiles serenely at Henrietta, then returns to her task.**

**Rising from the thin rug, the kitten gives itself a perfunctory tongue bath then ambles over to deposit itself into Henrietta's lap. Cooing endearments in its twitching, fight-tattered ear, she scritches its soft belly, and delights when it butts its head against her.**

**There is nothing spoken aloud, no talk of Alphas or Omegas, of parents or past lives. No epiphanies, no revelations.**

**Really, nothing at all happens that afternoon. It is merely peaceful, a moment in time imbued with the soft glow of home and safety and quiet companionship. Henrietta is warm, she is comfortable, she is content. **

**Though she does not yet know it, she will turn to the memory often, for refuge.**

* * *

The wind picked up, wailing something fierce, as if attempting to fill the vacuum of sound caused by the bear’s demise. With it came snow, heavier and wetter than before. It was beginning to clump on the wool of Rey’s scarf and hat.

If someone were to ask her, she could not have said how long she’d been standing there, staring at the bear’s carcass. But there was no more steam rising off it anymore.

She glanced at the Alpha. His eyes were closed. He’d dragged himself over to slump against a tree, and had seemingly slipped out of consciousness. In the snow beside him laid his sword, still smeared with blood from both him and the bear.

_ You spared his life, _ she thought. _ You could’ve run but you used your last bullet on a godforsaken bear to _ save _ him. _

And now she had naught to _ kill _him, as perhaps she should have. But he’d saved her life, too, alerting her to the bear’s presence and charging it before it could attack her.

Rey squinted at him through the falling snow.

Without moving closer, there was no way to assess the seriousness of his wounds. And did she even want to? 

_ He’s a murderer. _

She’d witnessed it herself, seen that Alpha’s head roll across the stage. Blood, so much spilled blood. Maybe he was destined to die here, by this spring, after all. Maybe trying to save him had been a futile gesture.

Despite her heavy wool coat and gloves and hat and scarf, her extremities had gone numb. She was shaking from adrenaline or shivering from cold; she knew not which. The wind was a fierce opponent all its own, slyer and crueler than any bear. It sliced through the layers she had on like they were no more than paper.

Shelter. She needed to find shelter.

With that in mind, Rey approached the Alpha executioner.

In his unconscious state, she could take a moment to study his features: long, proud nose, a full, wide mouth, moles dotted around his pale, angular, face, a thick sweep of eyelashes fanning out over high cheekbones, and over all of it, a heavy brow. She tugged gently at his makeshift bandage. Underneath, he’d packed the knife wound with yarrow, which seemed to be helping; there were no signs of infection so far.

Not one aspect of his visage looked like it belonged with any other, yet she realized, as she took him in, that he truly was handsome in his irregularity.

Lord, was he handsome, even with the gash she’d given him. Too handsome.

“Thank you for what you did,” she said quietly, memorizing those handsome features. “I… I am grateful.”

She blinked off the snowflakes gathering on her eyelashes.

“But I can’t save you twice.”

_ There are no debts here_, she promised herself. _ You owe him nothing. _

With that she rose, and turned to face the bitter wind.

“May Saint Padmé keep you,” she whispered ruefully, before plodding away.

. . .

She kept marching long after nightfall. Shock had crept in like a wreath of wool around her mind, blocking her from her common sense, from any ordering of her thoughts. She was bewildered, and knew nothing but the whirling white in front of her eyes, only darkness beyond it, each step more tiring than the last, her eyelids fighting to close, bushes like swaddled ghouls appearing out of nowhere and making her stumble over her own leaden feet.

The snowfall was so heavy, blinding with its white darkness.

Maybe she would’ve marched on through the night, if it meant putting distance between the handsome face of the Alpha executioner, the obliterated face of the bear, and her own weary face. But, just like the bushes, a cabin emerged from out of nowhere; all at once suddenly at arm’s length when only a moment before she’d thought there were miles of dark forest ahead.

She could just barely make it out: four rough, log-hewn walls, a snow-frosted roof, one dark broken hole where a window had been, and a door that was shut tight against the rising blizzard.

That _ had _to be good enough for Rey.

. . .

The interior of the cabin was rustic, far more so than the one she’d inhabited in Ontario, rougher than most she’d seen along the way. The lumber used for the wall looked ancient, gone soft from the elements in some parts; the entire structure was one room, and that one room was frigid, with a musty, dank smell settling in the back of her throat mere seconds after she’d entered and shut the door behind her.

There had once been a door-mounted bar to secure the entryway, but it was broken. She’d just have to hope the simple latch would hold.

Rey squinted until her eyes began to pick up the shapes in the room, though there was not much to see. In one corner sat a squat, cylindrical woodfire stove and beside it, a pile of tinder and logs.

Both were frozen over with the snow that had blown in through the shattered window.

With hands so cold they barely felt like her own, she managed to wrest the oilskin from her pack. She had no hammer or nails, so Rey had to settle for pushing the oilskin’s corners into the mud daubing between the logs that comprised the walls. She hoped that would be enough to keep the canvas in place, but in truth, she was too cold, too wet, and too tired to care.

Doing no more to get comfortable than wrapping herself in her deerskin, Rey collapsed against the far wall of the cabin, hugged her knapsack for warmth and solace, and sank down into a deep, dark sleep.

. . .

It took her several moments to understand the drastic change inside the cabin upon waking. She’d fallen asleep cold, wet, weak, and weary; she’d woken warm and dry and feeling significantly less weak. Still plagued by bone-deep weariness, though.

Furthermore, she realized as she came to her senses, she was not alone.

Where the cast-iron stove had stood useless and cold, buried under a layer of snow, now it shone a dull black from the light of the tawny, scarlet fire within. 

And crouching by the opened door of that stove, stoking those flickering, crackling flames, was the Alpha executioner. 

His back was to her, cast mostly in silhouette, but the shaggy outline of his fur coat and the brim of his pork pie hat were unmistakable. Rey could just make out the slashes in the coat where the bear had buried its claws in his back, and on his arm, the singed-away fur from her gunshot.

Several panicked thoughts rushed up to swarm Rey all at once. 

How was he alive? _ Still_? Was he a revenant, a ghost, a vampyre? Though her childhood picture books had always lauded Alphas’ legendary strengths, surely the fact of his surviving the last forty-eight hours went beyond all that into the supernatural?

Her next thought: had he followed her? (A silly one, to be sure. He was here, so he must have.)

And then: how had he made the fire?

And finally: where were her knives?

She glanced at the window and saw that the oilskin was now secured around the frame by nails. Underneath, leaning against the wall, was an axe. On the other side of the stove was a heap of dry logs and tinder; beside them lay his broadsword, safely sheathed in its scabbard.

How had he done all this while she slept, unhearing and unknowing?

With painstaking care not to make a sound, she reached down to her boot and grabbed the handle of her hunting knife. The feel of it in her hand was reassuring. Next she reached for the pistol at her waist, and jolted when she found nothing.

Had she dropped it?

Rey winced. She _ had_, she recalled it now; when the bear was attacking, she’d gone for the Winchester. In her shock, she must have left it behind. The Winchester, though. There were no bullets left, but it was still a useful means of delivering blunt force. Careful not to draw his attention, Rey placed her hand on the rifle, which she’d stowed under her knapsack.

But in moving it, sound was made. And the second it was, the Alpha was alerted. His head spun to the side, craning to listen.

She was weary. Beyond that, even; floating in some limbo between waking and dead. Yet she forced herself to move, to act. Up, up she jumped, up onto her feet, the barrel of the rifle gripped in her hands so she might swing its wooden butt like a club. She rushed the Alpha, the element of surprise somewhat on her side.

Or so she thought. For though she was fast, he was faster. He caught the butt in a gloved hand before it ever made contact with his skull—where she’d been aiming—and wrenched it from her. His face was a storm cloud, confusion and indignation marring his handsome, bandaged features.

“Omega,” he rumbled, shaking his head.

Her only reply was a half-feral screech as she pulled the hunting knife from her boot and mounted her next attack. Unbidden memories of that last day in London came back to her, of strong alphic hands grabbing at her, of wild eyes, of gaping, hungry mouths. No. It would be death before surrender; for him or her, it mattered not.

She aimed for the top of his torso—that soft, tender triangle of flesh above the muscle of his chest and below the muscle of his shoulders. But again he caught her, his hand easily clamping onto her wrist, fingers overlapping. 

_ He could snap it in two_, she thought hysterically, and gave a desperate yank to free herself.

He let go, but only after he’d squeezed hard enough to get her to drop the knife into his lap. He kicked it away to one of the cabin’s dark corners, frowning. Though he opened his mouth to say something, no words came out; he shut it again, then worked his jaw, as though chewing on nothing. His nostrils flared.

There she stood, towering over him, momentarily stunned. He stared up at her for a second before standing and taking a step forward. 

That incited her to action.

Her first punch landed at his ribs, where she’d shot him.

He doubled over, crying, “Stop!”

She did not. Again, she punched him. Again, her blow was directed towards where she _ knew _he was hurt. In response, he wheezed wordlessly while wrapping a defensive arm around himself.

This gave her an opening; she stepped back and reached into her coat to extract the bone white antler-hewn knife from its leather sheath. Raising it above her head, she sprang forward.

As he had with the bear, he met her attack with open arms. Once more he gripped her wrist in his hand. This time he twisted, hard. Alarmed, Rey let out a sharp yelp; both the pressure and the burn were agonizing.

_ You were supposed to make this easy for me, _ she wanted to holler at him. _ No one ever makes anything easy for me but you could have. You were supposed to die in the snow back there, with the bear, so I could spend the rest of my days wondering what might have been. _

_ So I could have kept you with me, in my own way. As I would have wanted you to be. A fantasy. _

Her knife clattered to the hard dirt floor beneath their feet, but now he did not let go of her. Kicking it away, he spun her then drew her body back against his, her arms crossed in front of her and restrained by his. Rey flailed against him, kicking fruitlessly at the air before her.

“Stop,” he muttered in her ear.

“No! Get out of my cabin! You should be dead three times over!”

He laughed mirthlessly, a dry, dull sound. “Well, I’m not.”

“Let go of me!”

She got her legs up high enough to rock him off his balance, then shoved an elbow back into his bullet wound. That pulled a pained groan from him; his hold on her loosened enough for Rey to break free. She wasted no time in turning and resuming her assault upon his body, aiming for where she knew he was wounded, and then for his privates, which Sister Dosmit had told her would render a man useless for a good long while.

Indeed, when her knee jerked hard between his legs, the Alpha dropped to the floor.

Rey leapt for the closest weapon: his sword.

It was far heavier than she’d even imagined, especially in her exhausted state. With a desperate grunt, she pulled it from its scabbard and advanced on him again, swinging it up over her head, ready to deliver a killing blow.

There was no time to think.

There was only her raw animal fear, propelling her to extinguish this threat.

How was he alive? 

If he could survive a gunshot wound from her rifle and being stabbed in the face and a fight with an angry bear—albeit with her assistance—Lord only knew what he would _ not _survive, what it might take to truly vanquish him.

How had he tracked her in the blizzard?

Her scent, obviously.

If he could find her in a blizzard, he might be able to find her anywhere.

Rey could think of only a few reasons why he might follow her so doggedly; she could not abide any of them. The worst, the one that made her stomach twist with fear, was the notion that he might take her back to that wretched, jagged fortress. That she might become an Omega of the First Order.

She remembered Leia and the Resistance member’s warnings. She remembered London. Death _ was _preferable, as was blood on her own hands; she was no Alpha’s Omega, and she never would be. If remaining free meant she had to end him here and now… so be it.

The blade came down, but pained as he was, he still managed to duck it. Then he was up, barreling into her, so rapidly she did not have time to think. One second she was coming at him with his own sword; the next, he was running her back against the wall, knocking the air from her lungs, tearing the sword from her hand.

“No,” she whimpered, breathless.

“Hush.”

What recourse was left her? She headbutted him. Blood began to spew like a geyser from his nose, pouring down over his lips, his chin, his neck. Some of it splattered onto Rey’s face.

And yet he held fast, unmoving, keeping her pinned against the log-hewn wall.

Her voice was weak; she could barely drag in breath. Still she managed: “Get out!”

“Calm yourself,” he commanded.

With that, he threw his hat off, revealing a tangle of damp, jet black waves. The firelight sparked up the red in the strands as his head dipped closer to hers. He loomed there for a moment, his face shadowed, and handsome, and terrible.

They were close enough to kiss. She could smell the coppery blood still seeping from his nostrils, and something else beside that… his desire. It was a scent all of its own, and it called to her.

Even if Rey _ could _ have pulled in a breath, she suspected she _ still _would not be able to.

Then he reached back and loosened the bandage on his face. It fell away, along with the yarrow, revealing the raw, red wound where she’d slashed him. Gloved hands landed on her shoulders; he turned her to face the wall. Rey felt her wrists being bound.

That raw animal fear rose up inside her again, turning her empty stomach.

“No, no, no,” she moaned through clenched teeth.

In earnest, this time, she kicked at him. Her boots landed on his own, on his shins, on his knees. She jerked herself back, then towards the wall, desperate to be free.

And he let her go.

She spun on him, her hands useless to her. “Untie me!”

His only response was to wipe the blood from his upper lip, chest heaving.

She screamed at him, a long, furious, frustrated noise; he bellowed back, matching her. She could see the blood staining his teeth, but there was no allowing for mercy now. They’d forsaken that back in the woods with the body of the dead bear. He’d _ followed _ her, out of the jaws of death and into _ her _ cabin.

He’d taken all her what-might-have-beens from her.

And she’d found this cabin, so it was _ hers_. He was the trespasser here.

Screaming again, she charged at him. The top of her head rammed into the center of his chest; he made no move to stop her. Nor did he try to stop the kicks she delivered to his legs, nor the second attempt to knee his groin.

“Omega,” he huffed, falling to the ground. He looked up at her, his dark eyes wide. “Stop.”

“_Why_? Why are you following me?”

Still she kicked at him; this time, he _ did _defend himself. A huge hand shot out and wrapped around her ankle. The world went topsy-turvy as he dragged her down. She landed roughly, squawking; the fall hurt her pulled-back shoulders and squashed her hands. He crawled over her and collapsed, nearly crushing her with his weight. 

It was then she recognized how he could take advantage, if he wanted. Laid out like this, hands tied and useless, she was truly vulnerable.

A frenzied sob bubbled up inside and burst forth. “Nonononono!”

“Stop.”

He _ could _violate her, if he wanted; he could wound her even more egregiously than she had him. But he did not. Instead, he reached behind his neck and untied the kerchief that had once served to hide his face. It was midnight blue-black and stiff with old blood. He pushed himself up and crawled backwards, dodging her feet as she kicked at him, until he could grab her ankles. Holding them together, he wrapped the length of dark fabric around them.

“That won’t keep me forever, you bastard!”

“I know,” he panted. “I know.”

Rey fell silent and still when he leaned back onto his haunches, then stood. His hair, damp from snow or perspiration or both, dangled messily over his brow. He backed away until he was out of her reach. She watched, perplexed, as he made a circuit around the one-room cabin, picking up the weapons as he went. Her knives, his sword, the rifle, and finally, deliberately turning so she could see, the pistol he’d tucked under his own belt. From his pocket he withdrew a handful of bullets. Those, too, he held out for her inspection. Then, arms full, he unlatched the door and stumbled out into the night. Through the doorway, Rey saw that the blizzard was raging even harder now; snow drove past at a horizontal angle, blown forth by a fearsome wind.

When the Alpha returned a minute later, his hands were empty.

Door latched behind him, he limped over to the far side of the cabin, near the stove. Grimacing, he lowered himself to the floor.

And there he stayed, as far from her as it was possible to be without leaving. The significance of that did not escape Rey; nor, as she reflected on the five or so minutes that had comprised their entire struggle, did it escape her that not once had he attempted to strike her back.

_ Alpha, _ she wanted to plead, _ Forgive me for hurting you. I know the art of nursing, let me mend your wounds. _

_ Alpha, _ she also wanted to shriek, _ I’ll kill you for this. _

There was no indication he was experiencing the same internal struggle. If anything—if she were to guess, based only on his slumped shoulders, his bowed head, his dark eyes trained on her—she would say that he seemed forlorn and resigned. Regretful, even.

She stared at him, trussed and furious and puzzled. He stared back, bloodied, still panting, wide-eyed.

“So,” he began.

Outside, the storm howled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/but-not-forgotten/)?
> 
> Once again, I am strangely short on links this time around! I guess not a lot of research was required to write about walking through a blizzard [I am, sadly, quite well-versed in that experience 😂.]
> 
> Some [rustic cabin](https://www.ducksters.com/history/westward_expansion/log_cabin.php) inspiration.
> 
> And some [wood](https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSPqe5XHVC6Auqtp2w_Ys_kVOVByBVYKMLFEEuviHgsbXt9RvVxRw) [stove](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9c/64/ea/9c64eaa0db78cf25be40938407f9e9ad.jpg) inspiration.
> 
> That's literally it! But let me just say again: thank you, so much, for engaging with this story in any way that you choose to. Readers, commentors, artists, lurkers, flailers, I love you all. Thank you. 💓


	9. About me, nothing worse they will tell you, my love, than what I told you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more gorgeous art this chapter, seriously it cannot be understated how much this completely makes my day to see! So thank you Mae for the stunning [moodboard](https://twitter.com/MaeReylo/status/1178583180753784833) and HouseofFinches for this lovely rendering of a [tense moment between Kylo and Rey](https://twitter.com/HouseOfFinches/status/1178871349290373120). You guys are so awesome. 💓

**Henrietta is some age between the innocent simplicity of her earliest memories and the numbing horror of her final days at Saint Padmé’s. She does not consider her childhood or adolescence to be one of unmet needs, one of suffering. She has not been abused, or starved, or beaten unjustly.**

**In fact, she often feels that the nuns and monks of Saint Padmé’s are better than parents, because there are more of them, which means more opportunities for attention and also, more opportunities for mischief. Henrietta is not a malicious child, but she does have a curious mind and a strong streak of self-righteousness that sometimes gets her into trouble. Dosmit tells her not to worry about this trait, that she is simply high-spirited and that she will calm with age. She is not so sure.**

**Her life is sometimes simple, sometimes complicated; most complications derive from the quarrels of her friends or her negligence in practicing the piano as frequently as Dosmit would like. She has many friends, the closest of which was Odavia, before Odavia was adopted; she never wants for clothes, though they are plain and second-hand, or shelter, though it is drafty in the winter and stuffy in the summer, or food, though it is always simple and only occasionally delicious. In her education, she is taught her figures, her letters, her biology—the science of designations—plus the history of the empire and finally, etiquette becoming of an Omega. **

**It is not a bad life, for the most part.**

**Yet if someone were to describe to Henrietta the emotions and yearnings of one who is touch-starved, she would recognize herself in those symptoms, and see her deprivation as it truly is.**

**She is rarely ever touched.**

**From time to time, Dosmit gently pets her hair. Occasionally, when the home exceeds its intended capacity and she must share a single bed with another child, they brush against each other in their sleep. There are the yearly physician visits.**

**That’s more or less it.**

**But this is not the default state of all children at Saint Padmé’s. Many are cuddlers, and huggers, and easily share affection with their classmates and bosom buddies.**

**“Omegas are gentler than Alphas,” Namenthe informs their group of friends one day at recess, his thin arm linked with Quinar’s. “We’re the softer of the species. That’s what Brother Lor San told us boys.”**

**But Henrietta has her doubts. She even takes them to Sister Dosmit, wondering if she is not in fact secretly an Alpha. To give Henrietta peace of mind, Dosmit asks the physician to perform a blood test on young Henrietta during that year’s checkup.**

**The result is conclusive; she is an Omega.**

**Yet though the presence of Alphas prickles her senses, like the scent of burnt hair or the sound of nails on slate, and though her 24th chromosome unmistakably designates her as an Omega, she finds herself feeling increasingly trapped in the tiny world of omegan peers, with their omegan jokes and omegan ways of being. She is a part of it all and yet separate.**

**Henrietta does not feel soft. She does not feel gentle.**

**But she ** ** _does _ ** **yearn to be touched.**

* * *

“My name is Kylo Ren,” he informed her, once he’d caught his breath.

“Fuck you, Kylo Ren.”

He cleared his throat. “Customarily, the polite response when learning someone’s name is to offer your own.”

She scowled at him.

“Have it your way, Omega.”

Rey tested first the restraints at her wrists then those holding her ankles. Both held fast. Shuffling, she scooted herself up along the wall until her seated position mirrored Kylo’s.

“Untie me,” she demanded.

“So you can shoot me? Or stab me?” He leaned forward, eyes blazing in the open stove’s flickering orange light. “Which would it be this time, I wonder?”

“This is barbaric.”

“Do you know,” he mused, rolling past her complaint, “that no one has ever fought me once—let alone twice—and lived?”

“Are you going to kill me?”

Kylo shook his head.

“Are you—” Rey swallowed down the fear that made her quiver, made the words taste sour on her tongue, “Are you going to take me back to the First Order and Morfran Snoke?”

His eyes narrowed at that; perhaps he was surprised. “Do you want me to?”

“How can you even ask me that!”

He shrugged. “Some Omegas live in the fortress of their own volition.”

“And the rest?”

Another shrug. But this time, his eyes slid away from hers. He fussed with the singed hole in the arm of his bearskin coat for a second, and then a minute, and then it became obvious he was not going to answer the question.

Rey huffed in disgust.

An uncomfortable quiet settled between them, interrupted only by the wailing winds and the fire’s crackle and pop.

. . .

“Untie me,” she tried again, some time later.

“Will you try to kill me?”

Rey could’ve lied, but something about his earnest tone compelled her to speak truthfully. So she said nothing.

“Will you run?”

She met his level stare dead-on, head cocked. “If you don’t untie me, I’ll do it myself. Eventually.”

One side of his mouth lifted and he puffed out an amused breath through his nose. “You won’t get very far dressed like that—old, threadbare clothes are no match for a blizzard.”

“I’ll survive,” she snapped.

“I imagine you will. For a while.” When she gave no reply, he added, “Might I offer an alternative?”

Rey tested the length of kerchief tied tightly around her ankles by attempting to open her legs. No give. It occurred to her: she could reach it, if she laid on her side and folded her legs behind her, bringing her feet close to her bound hands. She darted a glance at Kylo; he was watching her.

She stayed where she was. After a moment, he sighed. Then, with a groan, he shoved himself up off the wall and onto his feet. He limped across the room and grabbed her canvas knapsack, dragging it back to his side of the cabin.

“Oi!”

“Ah,” he said. “She speaks.”

He made quick work of the cinched closure, then began to unload its contents. Out came the pot, the spoon, the flints, her rosary beads, the small bear figurine whittled from a deer’s antler—those two items gave him pause, and he took a moment to study them before moving on—the spare set of men’s trousers, shirt, socks, and drawers.

“Those are my _ private _belongings,” she seethed, blushing. “Put them back!”

He hesitated, hands hovering by the bag’s opening. “Tell me your name and I will.”

When her response was merely to assume a more aggressive scowl, he resumed his excavation. Out came the rags for her bleeds and her heat slick, their purpose obvious from the stains Rey could not entirely wash out—again, her face burned so fiercely it felt like it had been shoved inside the stove—but to his credit, he set them aside without comment or further observation.

He did spend time on her decoction, though, uncorking the bottle and lifting it to his nose. He took a sniff, then laughed. Again, Rey’s face burned.

“For the record,” he said, shaking the bottle in her direction without looking up from her knapsack, “this stuff doesn’t work.”

Rey wanted to cry but she did not allow it; he would not get that satisfaction.

“Tell me your name?” he asked as he had before, nonchalantly.

“You’re a monster.”

That got his attention; his eyes shot up. They were fathomless from this distance, but the expression on his face was clear as day.

Grim satisfaction.

“Yes, I am.”

Nothing else forthcoming, he resumed his task. Out came the flasks; he clicked his tongue disappointedly upon finding the one that stunk of rye to be empty. Next came the one book in her possession, Doctor Anakin Skywalker’s magnum opus.

“_The Alpha and the Omega: the Science of the Soul_,” he read, with a scoff. “This looks well-loved.” He leaned forward, staring at Rey until she met his mocking gaze. “Did this bring you comfort, Omega? Did you sleep soundly at night, imagining Doctor Skywalker would save us all?”

“He tried,” she countered. “What did _ you _do?”

Kylo snorted. “The Discovery was the beginning—”

“It wasn’t! If you had read the book, then you’d know that all this started before Doctor Skywalker’s research. And he never meant—”

“Where do you think the idea for the Lover’s Death came from?”

“They twisted his message! They twisted his science!”

“What’s it to you?” he jeered. “You know the man personally? You love him?”

“I admire him.”

“Then you’re a fool, like him.”

“So be it,” she grit out, and resolved to speak no more.

As if sensing that, he went back to the knapsack. His next discovery was, to her relief, not the leather wallet containing some of her most precious possessions. Instead, he reached deep into the bag and pulled out the last of the venison, the raisins, and a few of the potatoes the Resistance had gifted her. On the next pass, he withdrew cheese, salt, onions, cabbage, sausage, and lard.

Her relief was short-lived. He shot her a vindictive smile, then tore off a huge chunk of venison with his teeth.

“That’s mine!” she shrieked, ready to launch herself at him, trussed limbs be damned.

He ceased his chewing, but the dried meat caused his unmaimed cheek to bulge. “If I knew your name, maybe I’d stop…”

“Rey!”

His eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “Ray?”

“Ar—ee—why. Rey.”

“Rey,” he marveled, nodding and resuming his chewing. “Suits you.”

His tone was so dry she could not be sure if she’d just been delivered a compliment or an insult. But her response would’ve been the same either way; she fixed him with a dour, furious look.

“You said you’d stop.”

“You want it back?” he asked, pointing to his moving jaw. “Can’t imagine why. This stuff is vile.”

“It’s all I have!”

She hated the way her voice wobbled as she shouted, and wished she could retrieve those words the minute they were out, but they hung in the air between them like a foul odor. Now it was Kylo’s turn to go quiet. He was still chewing, which did not surprise Rey. The stuff _ was _awful; it took forever to finish each bite of it. But that had served as a pastime on lean days, when it was all she had. It had made the meal last longer and had helped Rey to pretend that she felt sated afterwards.

Kylo swallowed eventually, making a face as he did. He left the rest of the food alone, opting instead to reach back into the bag. An arched brow was his only comment on the Ronson pist-o-liter, and then…

The leather wallet.

“Don't,” she breathed.

But he’d already opened it and withdrawn the lock of Dosmit’s hair. “From a beau?”

She was so furious, she was trembling. “Put… put that back.”

Wordlessly, without looking at her, he did so. The letter and her birth certificate appeared in his hands next. Try though she might to stifle them, Rey felt the angry tears scalding her cheeks, overflowing before she’d even realized she was crying.

“Leave those! Put them _ back_!”

“Henrietta Wednesday,” he murmured. “Left in January of 1900 at Saint Padmé’s Home for Foundling Omegas.”

“Stop.”

“Do you pray to her? Saint Padmé?”

That was not the question she had expected. 

“She was a good woman,” answered Rey, through her tears. “She devoted her life to helping people.”

His response surprised her even further. She expected to see triumph, or mockery, in his expression, as with Anakin. But when his eyes met hers, she recognized that strange, familiar sadness in their depths.

“Yes,” was his hushed reply. “She was. She did.”

Then came the moment she had been dreading. Her horror as he opened the envelope and withdrew the letter was like a punch to the gut.

“Please,” she keened, a whining, despondent plea.

That was _ hers_. Her secret, to keep or share as she saw fit.

Brow furrowed, he opened the letter. His eyes passed back and forth quickly, skimming over its lines. Rey wept bitter tears, and flailed against the ties that bound her, and finally, when he looked up from the aged paper, she wailed at him, an expression of her rage.

“It—it’s not—”

Had she been she expecting him to gloat over his discovery? To twirl his non-existent mustache like a villain from a storybook, and cackle with glee at finding her out?

Perhaps she had.

But he didn’t. He just looked… mournful.

“It’s not for_ you_!” she got out at last.

Hiding her tear-streaked face in her shoulder, she began to sob. What she did not say rang out in the ensuing silence: _ It was for me. _

Her, and her alone. It’d already been stolen from her once, and now he’d stolen it again. She hated him at that moment, more than she’d ever hated anyone in the world.

“I understand,” he whispered.

It was curious, that whisper. Again, not what she expected. So she stole a peek, ready to spit out a curse or an insult. Kylo remained unsmiling, somber; he did not say a word and there was no trace of his former levity as he replaced the letter in its envelope, then the envelope in the wallet, then the wallet in her knapsack.

After he shoved the knapsack closer to the fire, he shot a guilty, sidelong look her way as if to field her objections.

Rey observed him without speaking. She was resolved never to speak to him again; she’d already said too much.

The rest of her things, he gathered into a neat pile in one of the cabin’s dark corners, away from the stove and Rey. He did not eat any more of her food nor did he continue rifling through her belongings, but she could not help but notice that by separating her pack and its contents, he’d created an effective deterrent to her bolting; in a rushed escape, she could grab either her pack or _ some _of her things, but not everything all at once.

She would have to bide her time.

The cabin went quiet again and, angry though she was, she was also tired and defeated. So she made no attempt to disturb the fragile, false sense of peace.

. . .

At some point, though she endeavored mightily to keep her eyes open, exhaustion overtook her. Rey could not remember her eyes slipping shut, but they must have. 

She slept.

When she startled awake, she found the cabin much dimmer than before, steeped in the dark scarlet glow of the stove’s smoldering embers. It was still warm, though. And drier, now that the window had been blocked for hours.

Her head was resting on something soft, which she did not remember being the case earlier. To her surprise, she discovered that Kylo had, at some point, rolled up the deerskin and placed it under her cheek.

It was a thoughtful gesture and it unsettled her.

As for the Alpha, he was curled up against the opposite wall, on his side, his back to her. Without his coat, she could see how deeply the bear’s claws had sunk into the muscled bulk of his back, and how freely those wounds had bled; now the blood was dried. His shoulders rose and fell in deep, rhythmic breaths.

He’d fallen asleep as well.

There was something about that—about the trust it took for two strangers to sleep in the same room, about his thoughtfulness, that warmed Rey in a way the fire did not. She felt shame at that warmth, at taking comfort from his presence and his gesture.

But as she closed her eyes again, she decided that for right now, she would not fight the warmth.

It had been so long since she had taken any real comfort from anything.

. . .

She woke to the sound of Kylo stirring. The cabin was slightly brighter; daylight was fighting to get in through the once-white oilskin stretched over the window. Haltingly, appearing to be in pain, the Alpha staggered to his feet and clomped over to the door. Upon unlatching it, the wind wrested it away; it banged against the wall beside him, and a bitter, snowy gust sliced through the warm sanctum of the cabin. White flakes whooshed in past Kylo’s body.

Rey took the opportunity to look around in the light of day, though there were no shocking revelations; the cabin was as rough as she’d assumed. Just logs and mud for walls, a packed dirt floor, a shadowy roof, exposed beams running from eaves to eaves. The stove, its pipe chimney rising up and disappearing into the wall. Her knapsack and its contents. Rey and Kylo. That was all there was to it.

Muttering unseemly curses, Kylo used his entire weight to push the door closed and latch it again. Then he stomped over to the stove, grabbing the axe along the way, and raked the embers with its blade. With some huffing and puffing, and a few fresh logs placed atop the glowing coals, he stirred up a merry, roaring fire.

All of this, Rey watched without moving. Her ankles and wrists ached from being tied together, as did her neck, despite his gesture with the deerskin. She was starving. But, although she would never admit it aloud she could at least admit it to herself: she felt shockingly well-rested.

While still crouched before the stove’s open door, Kylo turned his head and peered at her.

“Still snowing,” he said, as though her powers of observation had somehow failed her during the night.

She grimaced at him.

He snorted. “Good morning to you, too.”

. . .

After he’d tarried in front of the stove for a while, Kylo took a deep breath and forced himself up onto his feet again.

Everything hurt.

He was a man who’d long ago become intimately familiar with pain, but he was still not happy about this particular quantity of it.

His bullet wound burned. His face throbbed. He ached where Rey’s kicks and punches had landed last night. The puncture wounds from the grizzly’s claws, which he’d done no more than rinse with fresh snow, were like blazing needles digging into his back.

He did not want to go out into the storm, but it could not be avoided.

The Omega, Henrietta—though she’d called herself Rey, a name that called to mind a cheerful little sunbeam, which this beautiful hellion certainly was not—eyed him warily as he passed once more towards the door, doing the best he could to hide his pained limp as he went.

It would not do to appear weak in front of her.

He suspected, however, that she noticed anyway. Those pretty hazel eyes of hers gleamed with hardened intellect and perception.

Of course Kylo wanted to know more. He wanted to know everything. Why was her family in Texas, when it could be inferred that she’d grown up in England? They’d written to Saint Padmé’s in 1910, why was she going there _ now_? Why did she call herself Rey, what sort of nickname was that? Why wasn’t she mated, how had she survived the madness that had descended upon London? 

So many questions. But it was clear to him that by reading that letter and eating her food, he had committed a transgression. She didn’t trust him, might never trust him, and without her trust, he could gain no knowledge of her soul. Who she was, who she’d been.

And that was what he wanted. The only thing he wanted.

So out into the frigid, whirling world of white he ventured, to figure out a way to please her.

. . .

Rey didn’t have to wait long after he’d left the cabin to see what would happen next; he returned a few minutes later with two metal pails, one empty, one full of snow.

“It’s terrible out there,” he told her, as he placed them by her feet, then plucked his coat from her body and donned it.

By way of response, she reared back and kicked him in the shin.

He stumbled away, hissing a litany of profanities that would’ve made even Dosmit blush. His teeth were bared, and he seemed almost winded as he leaned forward, resting his hands on his thighs. After a few deep breaths, he turned his head towards her, glaring.

She beamed at him.

“I’ll be back soon,” was all he said.

Then he headed for the door again, shutting it tightly behind him.

. . .

The call of nature was pressing urgently on her bladder.

Rey eyed the door, wondering how long he would be gone this time, if he’d locked the door from the outside, and what it was he’d gone to do. For a fleeting instant, she entertained the notion that he’d left her here to die.

She _ had _trounced him rather thoroughly… maybe this was his revenge.

Then she remembered how he’d leaned in when he’d had her up against the wall. Stomach fluttering, she let herself recall how his full lips had softened for just a second. How his nostrils had flared. The look in his eyes. The sadness after he’d read the letter, the hungry glances he thought she hadn’t seen him stealing this morning.

No.

He was definitely coming back.

There was no saying when, though, which meant now was as good a time as any to act.

Rolling onto her side, Rey bent her legs back. She grinned triumphantly as she began to fiddle with the binding around her ankles. It was just a few well-tied knots, nothing she couldn’t untie, given a bit of time. Which it would seem she had.

So she got to work.

She’d told Kylo she would free herself, after all. 

. . .

Kylo pulled the brim of his hat down low, tugged his coat closer around his neck, and headed out. He estimated he had a couple hours’ walking to do, maybe an hour to collect the meat he’d buried in the snow yesterday and flay the skin off the bear, and then the walk back. It had been years since he’d ventured this far south—he was sure they were nearly at the Kentucky border—but he still recognized these woods, albeit vaguely. 

The only problem was his damned stomach. He almost wished he’d taken more of the Omega’s food, but the memory of her face, flushed with her rage, beautiful and heartbreaking, was something that had haunted his sleep last night and stilled his hands this morning.

In his dreams, she’d sliced him limb from limb, stealing secrets from his mind by staring at him with those hard eyes of hers. He had awoken grumpy.

Full of regrets that had no place in his life.

Not very hungry.

He was now, though.

For much of his trek, he thought about her rage, her tears, how she’d screamed at him. He thought about her family, waiting for her in Jakku. It led him to recall the last time he’d been that angry. And his own family.

Back when he’d enlisted and was waiting to ship out. 

Luke, deranged, ranting about him being a scourge upon God’s earth, and earlier, the embittered silence between him and his parents that had led up to that terrible night.

How they’d come all the way to Quebec just to stare at him, disgusted and angry, after they’d found he’d been shirking his novitiate responsibilities at Saint Benoît’s to attend Morfran Snoke’s talks down in Montreal. How he’d railed against them in turn.

They’d sent him away, after all, and for what? For the crime of presenting as an Alpha, for the sin of being impetuous and willful?

_ Fuck them, _ he’d thought back then, again and again. _ Fuck everything they stand for. _

He’d been so full of piss and vinegar, so unshakably certain in Snoke’s vision of the future. Certain enough to leave them behind, to go to fight in a war he didn’t understand.

Catastrophe was as good a name as any to describe the last decade or so of Kylo Ren’s life. Or Ben Solo’s. Whoever he was now.

_ Does Rey know? _ he wondered. _ Does she know that the author of the book she loves so much is my grandfather, that the woman she prays to is my grandmother? _

_ That I am the scion of destruction? _

He shuddered. Snow was soaking through the legs of his trousers, seeping down inside his boots. His face was frozen; he’d already transgressed against her, he might as well have taken her scarf while he was at it, or her extra shirt, which had an advantage over his in that it still possessed sleeves.

No, she couldn’t know about Anakin and Padmé. Surely she would’ve said something, if she did.

Chagrin hounded him. The sad truth of it was, he’d never read his grandfather’s work. What point had there been? By the time he’d been old enough to comprehend the way Anakin’s breakthrough had changed the world, the changes had been irreversible. The Discovery had already become more than the man, more than his science, more than any pathetic manifesto.

The Discovery had become the foundation of the new world, the basis of everything young Benjamin Solo knew to be true. His memories of his childhood were pastel-hued and idyllic. A world of order, where everyone’s place in the world was clearly defined. There’d never been a need to read about the Discovery; he was _ living _it.

Except… now he wished he had. Maybe it would give him some insight into Rey’s thoughts, into who she was.

What could be gleaned from a person’s favorite book? Could he know her, if he read his grandfather’s musings on spirituality, destiny, and biology?

His mind turned to Padmé. He’d always wished he could have met her. She’d died giving birth to his mother and uncle.

What had Anakin thought about that? Had he been relieved? Disappointed? Did he begrudge them their lives when they had taken his—by all reports—beautiful, intelligent, and kind-hearted wife? Had he regretted the years he’d spent in his laboratory and out in the field when he could have been by her side?

Kylo had only the faintest, most distant memories of the man. He’d been busy, endlessly busy, from the day he’d published his first paper on the wondrous 24th chromosome, to the day he’d died alone in a house fire, determined to have been started by a dozing Anakin dropping his cigarette onto the bedspread.

For the remainder of his northward march, Kylo let his mind dredge up recollections of the woman whose name he never spoke aloud. He had let that past _ die_, willed himself to forget, and yet, there she’d been at the Hollow in the Rock, very much alive.

Leia Solo, née Skywalker.

How old she’d become, how small. How different from the day the telegram arrived with news of her father’s death, how different from the woman moving about in the high society of Illinois, rubbing elbows with the barons of Chicago and disappearing to New York for weeks at a time to fight for her causes, hosting elaborate parties and dinners, so important, so integral to everyone and everything. She had been a young woman full of energy then.

And yet, there had been traces of her younger self in that glimpse he’d stolen of her at the Hollow in the Rock. That old stoicism. That strength and vigor. Those dark eyes that still shined with certainty, with fortitude, with melancholy. Those attributes, time had not taken from her.

The cold seemed colder when he thought of his mother.

He was pleased to find, when he finally came upon the snow-covered lumps that were the remains of the bear, that the storm had kept scavengers away from the meat he’d buried, and that the pelt was untouched. That was a sort of blessing, he supposed, even if he did still hate these fucking winters.

Without ado, he pulled Rey’s hunting knife from the sheath he’d secured to his belt, brushed the snow and ice from the bear’s fur—banishing thoughts of the past, focusing on the task before him—and got to work flaying the beast.

. . .

Once the binding was loosened, Rey untied it and tossed it away. Immediately, she sprang to her feet. She allowed herself one triumphant cry, and then she walked herself backwards towards the door, intent on undoing the latch with her bound hands.

Halfway there.

The next part would prove more difficult.

She needed to find her knives.

. . .

Finding her knives did not prove difficult.

It was impossible.

After she’d unlatched the door—to her relief, Kylo had done nothing to lock it from without—she wandered out into a wicked hellscape of icy wind and driving snow. The drifts were higher than her knees, over her head in some places, and forced her to walk in great plodding steps. The elements made it difficult to see farther than a few paces ahead. There was some reprieve in the ramshackle latrine she found, at the edge of the clearing in which the cabin stood. But that was short-lived, for when she was finished, she had to return to the blizzard, and at once began to regret her decision to leave the cabin.

Rey grit her teeth against the cold and soldiered on. Her family was _ waiting_. The thought sparked urgency in her body, forcing one foot in front of the other, making her heart race, driving her forward. 

There were no tracks to follow in this storm, so there was no way for her to see where he’d walked the night before. She peered through the snow at her surroundings. Tall oak trees, mostly, many with their orange, crimson, and golden leaves still clinging pitifully to their long branches, fluttering in the wind. Some leaves that had conceded to the blizzard were scattered across the white, already being buried by fresh snowfall. The wind whistled painfully in her ears, even through her hat and scarf. Already her bare hands were beginning to go numb.

A loop around the cabin provided her with a better idea of just how dilapidated it was, and also this: behind it, not far from the latrine, there was a small shed, halfway to falling down, only held upright by the oak tree it leaned against. To one side of the shed was a log pile protected by jutting walls and the extended soffit of its wooden roof. 

That was one question answered, at least: this was how he’d been able to build the fire yesterday.

To her frustration, the door of the shed was locked with a large steel padlock. She kicked at it, once, twice, a dozen times, nearly toppling herself in the snow, but the lock was solid and did not budge. She returned to the cabin and picked up the axe, unsure how she would go about swinging it with her hands bound behind her, but determined not to admit defeat.

The axe was another impossibility, she soon discovered. It was too awkward; there was no way for Rey to lift her arms up high enough behind her and swing the axe with both accuracy and force.

She almost gave in to the tears that pricked at her eyes then. But her mania, her desperation to be free, would not allow for such a waste of time. Instead she sank to her knees in the snow, then fell onto her back and kicked up at the padlock as hard she could.

Nothing happened.

Panic truly kicked in, and in her hysteria, she howled up at ashen sky, the falling snow. Too much time was passing. She didn’t even know for certain that the weapons were stored in here; she was only operating on a hunch.

And how long would he be gone? Was he already on his way back? Again, she felt the urge to cry but there was no time. No time. There _ had _to be a way to free herself. 

Rey thought, and thought, and thought, as she laid there in the snow, incapable of giving up. Not now, not after everything.

What would Sister Dosmit do? Or Mother Maz?

_ The toothpick_. It was tucked away in an interior pocket of the knapsack; missed by Kylo Ren in his inspection of her belongings. It was a long shot, it might take her a while, but she had nothing to lose at this point, did she?

Hurrying back inside the cabin, latching the door behind her, she rummaged clumsily through the knapsack, unable to see what she was doing, until she felt the pocket and then, reaching inside, the cool silver sliver of toothpick.

She pulled it out. Peering over her shoulder, she forced her numb, uncoordinated fingers to grip the toothpick like a tool and begin poking at the rigidly tied knots in the buckskin restraints.

This had to work.

It _ had _to.

. . .

Bear skinned, frozen meat gathered, Kylo was nearly back to the cabin—tired, stiff, extremities half-frozen—when he spied it. A shape coming towards him, just visible through the heavy curtain of white: a thin, shambling creature, dragging something behind it.

He reached for his pistol a half-second before he caught it, that scent.

It was Rey, smelling like everything he’d ever wanted, like everything he’d given up, like a life he had never realized he’d been craving.

And then he saw her, _ really _saw her, through the heavy curtain of silver-white: her desperation like a palpable thing, determination evident in her beautiful face, contorted in pain or effort or exhaustion, or maybe all three. Her stooped posture, her clear eyes.

She’d freed herself, at least partially, just like she’d said she would, and had mounted her escape.

His clever Omega.

. . .

It hadn’t worked. For what, by Rey’s estimation, had been nearly an hour, she had picked at the knots without feeling a bit of give. But she’d felt the passing of time pressing down on her, a weight that had grown heavier with each minute, until she could barely breathe through her panic.

So, clumsily, she’d shoved her things into her pack, pulled on her gloves, dragged the pack to the door, and then out into the storm.

She could not even say if she’d latched the door behind her. Such had been her state of mind.

It had been a hobbled, graceless, journey, and she hadn’t gotten very far. She’d walked for an hour, perhaps a bit longer, but there’d been a sinking feeling in her stomach as she’d trudged along, a sense that this was a doomed mission. 

For one thing, she seemed to be walking into the wind, which meant snow in her face. More specifically, in her eyes. For another thing, there was no easy way for her to check the map, and even if there had been, it was a railway map, with no landmarks, and while Leia’s advice had been all well and good in fair weather—head due south through the Shawnee Hills, until you come to a river so wide it must be the Ohio—it was practically impossible to carry out these instructions when the sun was not visible overhead.

Of _ course _she did not have a compass. Why would she have thought to purchase something so practical when instead she could go for tea and coffee, finite luxuries?

And finally, the albatross: hauling the weight of the pack behind her was a very different sort of strain from carrying it, exacerbating the crick in her neck and shoulders from sleeping awkwardly the night before. It was difficult, it was painful, and it was slowing her down.

_ All _of this was slowing her down.

Which didn’t matter anyway, she realized, upon sighting him.

Because he was hauling his own cargo over one shoulder. It looked to be a large bundle of brown-blonde bear fur. 

The pelt.

It made perfect sense that he had gone back for it; what a waste it would be, not to scavenge its fur and meat and anything else he could.

Rey almost respected him for his foresight.

But if he was coming _ back _ from the bear, and she was moving in _ his _direction, then however far she’d come… it had been in the wrong direction.

She’d been headed north.

“Oh, bugger,” she muttered, as he approached her. The fight momentarily abandoned her; she stood, listing in the wind, watching him grow larger, until he was right in front of her, until his broad chest blocked everything else from view.

“Omega,” he said, when he was near enough that he might be heard. He seemed to think better of that greeting, and amended it. “Henrietta.”

“Rey,” she corrected, forgetting her oath never to speak to him again.

He nodded contritely. “Rey.”

For a ridiculous instant, neither of them said anything. They peered at each other as the snow whirled around them.

There was the tiniest quirk at the edge of his mouth. Just one side, just a passing trace of a smile, blink-and-you-miss-it.

“Don’t suppose we could skip the combat,” he ventured, leaning in closer. 

It was not decent, how close he was standing; but then, he’d already laid atop her, as a husband might his wife. She could feel the heat radiating from his body, could have slumped against him and demanded he carry her from here, if she’d wished.

In a soft tone, he added, “It’s been a long day.”

She had no knives. She had no Winchester. Her hands were still tied behind her back. She was hungry, she was tired, she was cold, she was soaked.

Rey sighed. It _ had _been a long day. It was a strange thing, feeling a pang of empathy for someone she’d sworn to despise forever. She’d need to be careful lest she grow accustomed to it.

But for now, it would seem that she needed his help. Never mind that he was the cause of all her current problems; she needed him to be the solution, too.

“You’ll die out here,” he warned, eyeing her pack in the snow behind her. “Come back inside with me. Please.”

A spark of anger ignited at his command, despite his attempt at tacked-on courtesy. 

“And put myself at your mercy? _ You _tied me up!”

“You attacked me.”

“You were trespassing!”

At that, Kylo dropped the bear skin into the snow. It stayed trussed; he’d used a strip of buckskin to gather the hide of the legs together.

“Turn around,” he bid her.

Rey searched his sad, scarred face, the snow gathered around the brim of his hat, the bloodied shirt and bedraggled, shaggy coat. Her eyes returned to his. There was earnestness there, like he was ready to beg.

Maybe she wanted him to. She bit her tongue and remained still.

He bent his head until his lips were nearly touching the shell of her ear. Chimney smoke and roasting chestnuts and hoarfrost were all around Rey; her eyes nearly rolled back into her head, so overcome by contentment was she at being enveloped in that scent.

Like home. Not a home she’d ever lived in, but one where she wanted to dwell a while. Forever, maybe.

His breath puffed against her hair, warm, as he spoke to her in a soft, soothing voice. “I shouldn’t have touched your things—I won’t again. I won’t touch _ you_. I won’t even step onto your side of the cabin. Promise.”

Then he straightened, waiting.

Rey hesitated. Her teeth had been chattering for some time now; each gust of wind sent her into a shivering convulsion. The storm showed no sign of breaking and she could barely see beyond the next tree. 

Still. She had all her things together, she was mostly unrestrained. What if this was her only opportunity to flee?

Then again, what if fleeing resulted in her death?

But what if _ staying _ did?

Everything was at stake, so she chewed her lip, stared into his pyrite eyes, and contemplated. Last winter, she’d ridden out storms of this caliber by tucking herself away in a cozy, secure little cabin. Luck. Luck had seen her through. Yes, she’d spent a year out on the rails, but was she prepared to camp and trek through a damned blizzard?

The devil she knew, the devil she didn’t. Rey was pretty sure she could _ handle _ Kylo Ren; she was equally _ un_sure if she could handle frostbite or hypothermia, despite her on-the-fly nursing education.

“I want my weapons back,” she bartered.

“So you can kill me in my sleep?”

“I’ll only kill you if you come near me.”

He frowned down at her. Frost had begun to bloom along his dark eyebrows and the unshaven stubble around his mouth, giving him the appearance of a wintry sylvan demon.

“The rifle,” he said, at last. “Not the knives. Agreed?”

Giving a weary nod, Rey turned and presented him with her bound hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/and-because-love-battles/)?
> 
> Just some fun [cussing history](https://www.salon.com/2013/05/11/the_modern_history_of_swearing_where_all_the_dirtiest_words_come_from/).
> 
> What's the significance of a [lock of hair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lock_of_hair)?
> 
> Ye olde timey [toothpick](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/23/69/41/236941cd0481f2454a9006079234ca8e.jpg)!
> 
> How to [field dress a bear](https://goneoutdoors.com/field-dress-black-bear-7369709.html) and a [forum on the process of turning its fur into a rug](https://thesurvivalpodcast.com/forum/index.php?topic=53972.0).
> 
> Okay, I think that's it from me. I'm having kind of a rough week because I have a cold and work is getting very hectic, but your feedback makes it a million times better, so thank you for that! Three chapters coming next week. It's about time we get this show on the road, I think. [Pun very much intended.] 🖤


	10. True tenderness is silent and can't be mistaken for anything else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two beautiful pieces of art to share with you this time around, and I'm so excited about both of them. [curiousniffin](https://twitter.com/curiousniffin) has made a seriously awesome [moodboard](https://twitter.com/curiousniffin/status/1179451270626729985) for this fic which I cannot stop staring at because each picture in it is so PERFECT. And the inestimably talented [HouseofFinches](https://twitter.com/HouseofFinches) has drawn [yet another tense moment [in a different way from last time]](https://twitter.com/HouseOfFinches/status/1179558021908828162) between Rey and Kylo, from the last chapter. They are both incredible, please do check them out and thank you again niffin and HoF! 🥰

**Ivano has begun to tease her when the nuns aren’t looking.**

**A year ago they were friends. Now he pulls her braids, tries to frighten her by leaving snails where he knows she will find them, and has taken to calling her ‘homely Heni.’ **

**She is uncomfortable in her own skin; a growth spurt has propelled her to a height unusual for female Omegas, her face is dotted with unseemly blemishes and freckles, but her knees are still knobby, her hips and breasts small, and unlike the others, she has not yet begun her heats. **

**The teasing only exacerbates her self-consciousness.**

**Henrietta is caught in the torturous no man’s land of early adolescence. Some days she longs for the joys of her childhood, some days she longs for adulthood and freedom, resenting how Saint Padmé’s stifles her at every turn. **

****

**The other day, Quinar went with Sister Mashra to hear a suffragette group’s talk without inviting her and she cried for two hours. A week ago, she could not help but stare at the way Ivano’s hair tapers down to the nape of his neck. How tan and vulnerable and perfect that small patch of skin looks to her.**

**Of late, everything is an agony or a delight.**

**It happens the day he leaves a handful of wet snails in her bed. She tracks him down with ease; he’s in the common room with the other boys, as he often is. They’re old enough now that they leave home at dawn every day to toil in a nearby mill, but young enough that they still return to Saint Padmé’s every night for supper and a warm bed.**

**He’s laughing at something Namenthe has said when she marches up to him, draws her arm back, and punches him in the mouth. His teeth puncture the soft skin at the top of her hand, causing her to cry out and clutch her hand to her chest. She inspects the wound; though it bleeds, it is superficial, yet she suspects it will leave a scar.**

**Ivano has stopped laughing. He gawks at her, horrified, holding his face. His eyes are watering with tears; his brow is crumpled. When he drops his hand for a moment, she can see two bloodied teeth in his palm, and a dark hole where they used to be on the right side of his mouth. There is blood on his lips, blood on his teeth, blood in his hand, blood pouring down his chin, blood everywhere.**

**Guilt.**

**She feels horrible guilt at the sight; Mother Maz’s tiny, wrinkled hand clamps onto her shoulder a moment later and she does not resist being pulled away, down the corridor, into the Mother Superior’s office.**

**After Henrietta is gently pushed to sit in a chair across the big oak desk from Maz’s, she is told to stay. The door clicks shut behind her. The pendulum clock on the wall ticks out the torturous seconds while she waits. **

**When Maz returns, Sister Dosmit is in tow.**

**Maz takes her seat at the desk; Dosmit crosses her arms and leans against the window behind Maz.**

**“Well,” begins Maz. She looks tired; her dark brow is wrinkled, her lips pursed. “Would you like to tell us just what on ** ** _Earth _ ** **you were thinking?”**

**“He put snails in my bed,” mutters Henrietta. She cannot meet Dosmit’s disappointed glare, so she stares off to her right, at the Mother Superior’s locked china cabinet, at windowed doors protecting shelves of silver and crystal.**

**“Henrietta Wednesday, two of Ivano’s teeth are missing. Luckily for him, they were located on the side of his mouth and not the front. Perhaps if he does not smile very widely, no one will notice. And you mean to tell me that this is a result of his pulling a ** ** _prank _ ** **on you?”**

**Maz’s wry tone belies the seriousness of her statement; Henrietta was already feeling the consequences of her rashness, the guilt and shame and regret, but now it is doubled.**

**Sister Dosmit says nothing.**

**“How should we punish you for such a deed, Henrietta? You are nearly on the brink of womanhood. I hardly know what to say—surely you know better than this.”**

**She shrugs, eyes on her lap, where her balled fists clutch at the skirt of her dress. She does. Of course she does.**

**Someone sighs. Then Maz says, “Well, the cane or the belt? Which will it be?”**

**“Belt.” **

**Her voice sounds small and contrite to her own ears. Of all the times she has been punished, surely she has never deserved it as much as she does right now. What was she ** ** _thinking_****, hurting Ivano like that? Ivano is her friend, even if he ** ** _has _ ** **become a nuisance of late.**

**The answer stings in its reprobation: she wasn’t thinking. She was reacting mindlessly, letting her temper get the better of her.**

**Behaving like a child.**

**“Very well.” Maz clears her throat. “Henrietta, look at me.”**

**She does. Maz’s expression is not entirely one of censure. There is pity there.**

**“What you did was very foolish. And you will make it right—you shall take over Ivano’s chores for the summer, and you shall spend the remainder of your time tutoring the younger children who are doing poorly in their studies. This will earn you a small wage. It is to be placed towards filling the gap in poor Ivano’s mouth. Is that understood?”**

**There is a wonderful sense of relief that fills her as she listens: here is a way to make it right. She cannot put the teeth back in Ivano’s head, she cannot undo her impetuousness, but she can buy him new teeth and work towards a more reasonable temperament in the process.**

**This can be fixed. She is not being forsaken. She will be forgiven.**

**“Yes, Mother Maz,” she says quietly.**

**Maz nods. “Good.”**

**Henrietta rises to leave, but she is halted by Dosmit’s solemn: “Wait.”**

**Dosmit is still staring at her with that disappointed frown, and where a moment ago there was relief, now she wants to cry again.**

**“We all make mistakes,” Dosmit says. “But it is important that we learn from them. What have you learned, Henrietta?”**

**She is tempted to jest. To say something like, ‘****_a snail in the bed does not merit a punch in the mouth_****’, or, ‘****_next time, go for the front teeth_****.’ But Dosmit is looking at her as if Henrietta has failed ** ** _her _ ** **personally and all of a sudden, finding humor in the situation feels like a criminal offense.**

**“Hitting is bad,” she musters.**

**“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”**

**That draws a scandalized laugh from Maz, but Dosmit arches a brow at her, and Maz merely gestures for the nun to continue.**

**“Regardless,” she says, those grey eyes once more settling on Henrietta, keen, seeing through any pretense she might try to construct. “Violence may not always be an option—you might not always have your fists available to you. And if you don’t, you will have to fight in other ways.”**

**“What other ways?” puzzles Henrietta.**

**Dosmit sucks in a sharp breath before answering. **

**“Perhaps with your words, my dear. Or with your silence.”**

* * *

Once he’d cut through her bindings, using her own knife to do it, the walk back was performed without speaking.

It was a détente.

But it felt… precarious.

So Kylo kept his mouth shut while she shouldered her knapsack, while she led the way through the snow and trees and wind, while the day grew ever dimmer, ever colder, while she opened the door and stumbled back inside the cabin. While she curled up on the side with the stove, formerly his.

Clearly making a declaration. One with which, considering the precarious state of things, it did not seem he was in a position to argue.

He dropped the pelt on the floor and went back out into the storm, storing several pounds of bear meat in a snowbank outside the cabin door then retrieving as much wood as he could carry, which he dumped by the stove without looking her way. Three times he did this, three armfuls of wood he brought back.

That would be enough, he hoped, to keep them for a while.

By the time he was finished, Rey had placed her pot and spoon atop the stove, tacitly giving her permission for it to be used. After he’d cut a portion of the dark red meat into appropriately-sized chunks for a soup, restarted the dead fire, and gotten the meat sauteing, she produced an onion and two potatoes, which she handed to him. He peeled them, diced them, and added them to the pot.

All of this was also performed in absolute silence. Not once did Rey meet Kylo’s eyes, though _ he _could not help stealing glances at her every few seconds.

She was so lovely.

Reedy, tall, rawboned, but strong and resolute. A face that was sweet, freckled and apple-cheeked, but eyes that spoke of the hardships she had survived. Unflinching eyes. Hard eyes.

She wanted nothing to do with him, that much was clear. Only Providence could have forced her back into the cabin with him, but Kylo would take what he could get.

There were no other steps to the preparation of the soup but to add snow to the pot once the meat had been seared and then wait, allowing it to slowly do what soups did. So Kylo lumbered back to his side of the cabin, slid down the wall, and set himself upon the task of separating the bear’s hide and fur from the viscous membrane inside.

. . .

She watched him work from under her eyelashes, in surreptitious glimpses, the rifle he’d returned sitting on the floor beside her, within reach, ready to be wielded at a second’s notice. She wondered if he realized the pained grimace he wore at all times, or how stiffly he was moving.

Perfunctory scraping of the bear’s hide finished, he took the pail of water—formerly snow—he’d left for her and submerged the pelt, venturing briefly outside once more to gather some rocks which he then used to weigh it down.

Subtle _ he _was not; she caught him staring at her several times.

Not a word was said.

Atop the now-hot stove, the melted snow and bear meat were beginning to hiss and sputter. Without comment, she added a pinch of salt from her precious supply and gave the ingredients a stir.

Then she opened Doctor Skywalker’s book to a random page and hid her face behind it.

. . .

“What do you know about the First Order?”

She’d pulled that damned book out from her pack; nose buried in it, her eyes did not lift from its pages, not even at his question, so purposefully provocative that he’d hoped it would force a response.

Kylo wanted her to snarl and shout at him like she had yesterday. It was better than her silence.

He held his breath, but no response came.

“They restored order to this area, after the Catastrophe,” he sighed, but it changed nothing; her eyes remained glued to the page.

Had the Resistance already filled her mind with animosity for Snoke and the First Order?

Had they told her about him?

That almost stilled his tongue. If all she knew of him was what she’d heard from the woman whose name he trained himself not to remember, then he stood no chance of ever making a good impression.

_ A monster_, she’d said. Had _ she _ told Rey that? Was that what _ she _thought of him these days?

If so, she wasn't wrong.

“Back to how it was before, when I was a boy, after the Discovery,” he went on, a doomed man on a futile mission to explain something the Omega clearly did not care about. “Structure. Order. Law.”

“Alphas run the world, Omegas repopulate, and the labor of Betas keep it spinning,” she bit out, voice like flint, at last breaking her silent treatment. Her eyes flitted up to meet his, then back down to the page. “I’ve heard it.”

“You don’t know what it was like, when I got back from the war.”

“Don’t I?”

That gave him pause, and he pursed his lips, working his jaw—an old nervous habit—but she did not elaborate, did not look at him again.

“You saw me at the outpost,” he said, slowly, working through the enigma that was Rey aloud, in the hopes it might draw another angry reaction. “So you have surmised—correctly—that I am a monster. Had you heard of me before then?”

Nothing.

“Did the Resistance speak of me?”

Again, nothing.

The next words he forced out through clenched teeth. “Did… _ Leia_?”

Ah, there it was. A quick lift of her eyebrows, a hurried glance his way before she returned to studiously ignoring him.

He gave a wry huff. “A disappointed mother is a terrible thing. But… I ‘spose your own mother knows something about that.”

“Do not speak of it again,” she hissed, eyes blazing—if they could have, they would have burned clean through the book—and her hand landed on the barrel of the Winchester, ready to pick it up. “_Ever_.” 

It was a very clear threat.

Kylo raised his hands in surrender.

The détentewas resumed.

. . . 

The words on the page blurred into an incomprehensible string of lines and loops; Rey could not have focused on Anakin’s musings on the little-known prehistoric origins of designations even if she wanted to.

He’d brought up the letter, that infringement she’d had to set aside in order to survive the storm, and with it had come her ire from last night. But he’d also dropped in her lap an offering, casual, as a cat might a slain mouse: Leia was his mother. That, she had not expected.

It did explain some things, though.

Leia’s distant stare, the pain in her expression when Rey had mentioned the executioner to her. Her oblique reference to those who were lost to themselves. The similarity in their mournful air, that sense of déjà vu she’d gotten when she saw Kylo up close for the first time.

He was his mother’s son. 

Rey was no fool; she saw what he was trying to do. In offering such an interesting tidbit about himself, he was hoping she would reciprocate.

She did not. Though the jumbled letters refused to reassemble themselves into sensible, meaningful words and sentences, she would not spare him so much as a glance, not even for all the bear meat in the midwest. He only knew what he knew because he’d read that which was not his to read, and he’d brought it up just to provoke her. To respond would be to reward that behavior; this much, Rey had learned from her years assisting the nuns with childcare.

Just then, Kylo sighed, a loud, breathy thing.

Designed to draw attention.

She could just make out his shape in her peripheral vision. Visibly bored, slumped against the wall, spinning her knife in his hand.

“Did you like growing up in London?” he asked.

Rey pressed her lips together to avoid the temptation of answering.

“Didn’t grow up in a city myself,” he went on. “But in a suburb. My father’s business took him to Chicago often. Ran an import-export business on the Great Lakes.”

_ Nothing_, she bid herself. _ Say nothing. Give him nothing. _

“He was a Beta, not like my mother. She was always busy, too. Great patron of the arts. Involved in local politics. Committees, endless committees and luncheons and galas.”

Did he expect pity? She dared not look at him to determine whether he did or not. He would get nothing from her. _ Blood from a stone_, she promised herself.

“The old man took me on one of his business trips once—we sailed to London, then down to the Caribbean, and up to Halifax Harbor. The world was still full of people then. Full of life.” 

His tone was wistful; he sounded like he was a thousand miles and a few decades away, lost in memory. Rey could relate. The temptation to engage was nearly a physical thing now, but she clutched the book tightly in her hands, until her knuckles whitened and her fingers ached, and spoke not a word.

He sighed again. “That was long before the Catastrophe, and Saint Benoît’s, and Argonne.”

She fidgeted, then forced herself to remain still, drawing in and releasing a deep breath. She’d heard of Argonne, of the use of poisonous gas—who had released it first had never been determined—and of the terrible losses. The final and bloodiest battle in the Catastrophe.

“Never seen anything like it. Hope I never do again.” Kylo chuffed out a mirthless laugh, adding, “The war to end all wars and the battle to end all battles.”

A pregnant pause, like he was waiting, hoping she might reply.

Then: “You ever see the effects of the alphic gas?”

Oh, the terrible recollections his words evoked. Rey could not have ignored that forlorn question even if she tried. She lifted her gaze, meeting his. His eyes shone wetly. She gave him the briefest, smallest of nods.

And did her best to repel the memories of that last day in London.

He nodded back. “Spread out like a fog over the battlefield. We didn’t know—” he cut himself off with a huff, then shrugged, “Even if we _ had _known what it was going to do, there would’ve been no way to outrun it. My escape was dumb luck. Stumbled on some french farmer’s underground bunker—along with a few others, all huddled up, arguing about how long we’d have to wait until it dissipated. Stayed down there for two days.”

“Did they survive, too?” she asked, breathless, unable to resist, needing to know.

“Only ones in our company who did. When we came up… it was…” another pause, longer this time, his head bowed, his chest rising and falling several times before he could make himself go on. “They’d all gone into rut. Both armies. Tore each other and themselves apart.”

Rey shuddered.

“Came home a deserter—to this,” he said, jerking his chin towards the canvas-covered window. “Ruins. More chaos, even worse than the battlefields. And the winters.”

She thought of last winter, how bitterly the winds had blown, how deep the snow had fallen. Her supposition had been that this was just the way of things in Canada. Had she been mistaken?

Her voice was a tremulous whisper. “Is this weather… unnatural?”

“What is natural, anymore?”

Rey scooted closer to the stove. Disquieted, she gave the stew a stir before pulling her deerskin from her pack and wrapping it around herself.

“They’ve been getting worse, though,” he said, as much to himself as to her. Head still hanging, he looked at her from under his heavy brow and damp, bedraggled locks. “Colder, longer, more snow. A grizzly bear living down this way would’ve been unthinkable when I was younger.”

“Well, it’s fortunate then, that I’m going farther south.”

To that he merely nodded, tired, and cast his eyes downward once more. Soon enough, they sank closed completely, and his breathing evened out. Watching him sleep, Rey wavered between luxuriating in the chance to study him without his own observation in turn, and fighting off the strangest sense of protectiveness, possessiveness.

If only he weren’t so bloody handsome, didn’t smell so alluring, wasn’t so confoundingly unguarded with her. 

Their truce, his admission about his mother and the war, the vulnerability he’d revealed, his trusting her with his person while he slept: each choice he made left her more perplexed than the last.

. . .

“Had a governess who took me to a sideshow, when I was young,” he offered, once he’d awakened and checked on the stew. Its aroma was mouthwatering. It’d been a few hours, and the meat was tender, falling apart, the potatoes soft and the onions translucent. He’d slept deeply, soundly, without dreams, feeling safe knowing Rey was nearby with her Winchester. 

“Saw a mastodon. Its skeleton.”

It seemed a funny turn of events, an Omega watching over _ him_, but he was trying not to overthink it.

There was only one pot and only one spoon. He cast a cautious glance her way but she stared back, unyielding.

He offered her the spoon.

Taking it, she dipped it into the pot and lifted it to her mouth, sipping tentatively at the broth.

Her eyebrows jumped, eyes lighting up in a way he had not seen before. A shadow of a smile passed across her face. Happy. She looked happy, and… she smelled happy. There was a hint of sweetness to her scent, even more so than usual.

It was enchanting.

Kylo knew then that he would do nearly anything to bask in that scent. He could foresee himself growing addicted to her happiness, her scent, and her nearness; a panacea for the end of the days.

Someone with whom he might ride out the apocalypse.

“It’s… good,” she admitted.

He fell back on his heels, giving her space, allowing her to get closer. With gloved hands, she pulled the stew off the stovetop, then crouched over the pot and tucked into it, greedily shoveling spoonfuls into her mouth, heedless of its scalding heat. There was nothing graceful or dainty about the way she ate. And yet… he was charmed, utterly charmed.

“Glad you think so,” he managed to say, with some semblance of nonchalance.

“What’s a mastodon?”

He almost smiled at her guilelessness. “A… a woolly mammoth?”

“Oh. I’ve seen those, in pictures. Never been to a sideshow.”

“I’ve been thinking about them lately. Mastodons. How they might come back if the winters keep on like this.”

She froze, blinking at him. “Can that happen? Can things that are dead and gone… come back?”

The plaintive lilt of her question made him swallow regretfully; this was clearly painful territory for both of them. He needed to be more mindful in his attempts to draw her out, lest he wound her in the process.

But at the same time, he wanted her to share her wounds, as he had. He wanted to _ understand_.

So he shrugged. “Don’t really know.”

Deflated, she returned to her feasting.

“But… maybe,” he said. “Maybe they can.”

The spoon hovered in front of her open mouth for a moment before, with a flick of her eyes up to him then back to the soup, she dropped it into the pot and nudged the whole thing over to him.

Kylo accepted without hesitation. The moment the first bit of greasy meat and soft potato hit his tongue, his stomach cramped painfully then gave a frightful gurgle. He tried not to think about the last time he’d eaten as he inhaled at least a third of the pot’s too-hot contents. The roof of his mouth and tongue were scalded smooth but he could not help himself.

“Why?” she asked softly, wrapping her arms around her bent knees as she watched him.

“Why what?”

It was rude to speak with one’s mouth full; Kylo did not care. He doubted she did either.

“Why do you… do what you do?”

Oh.

That.

He, too, dropped the spoon back into the pot.

And he sighed.

. . .

When he finally began to speak, after staring silently at the floor for some time, it was with a hollow, bitter tone. Far harsher than he had spoken to her thus far.

Resigned.

“I deserted,” he said. “Everyone who came back did. We came home criminals and cowards. And worse—I was a coward who’d fought on the wrong side, according to my parents. They wanted nothing to do with me when I left.”

“You fought with the Coalition for Designation,” she surmised.

A shrug. “Everything seemed simple when I was a boy—the world made sense then. The way it was… that’s what I thought I was fighting for. How it was before they sent me away. Did Leia tell you that? I presented as an Alpha and they sent me to live in Saint-Benoît-du-Kenobi in Québec with my uncle, to take a Beta monk’s vows.”

“But… but a monk can’t be a soldier.”

“I wasn’t. A monk or a Beta. Never broke _ that _ promise, at least. I ran away to fight when I was twenty-four. All I knew of the world were the glimpses I’d stolen when I broke out of the monastery.” He frowned to himself. “Didn’t know _ a damn thing_.”

Another piece fell into place for Rey, with that revelation. She’d been sequestered away too, in a sense, during her life at Saint Padmé’s. But she’d been allowed to leave its confines sometimes, been allowed to go out into the Omega District and see what the madness had taken hold of the world.

If she hadn’t, might she have thought differently about the way things used to be?

She could not say.

“I’ll tell you what you missed,” she said bitterly, “It was a cruel place where no one got to decide for themselves what kind of life they’d live.”

He shook his head. “That’s not how I remember my childhood—people were happy.”

“Alphas were happy. Because they were on top.”

“Everyone had a place. A purpose.”

“Some people’s _ place _was at the bottom,” Rey spat back. “And their purpose had very little to do with their own wishes or dreams.”

“I—” he faltered, shaking his head. “My…”

Surely he was not so naive as to not understand that. She could not believe—having seen his intelligence in action—that that was possible.

Finally, he coughed out, “Ah.”

Outrage bloomed, hot and pressing, in her chest, stealing her breath, but she worked to keep her voice steady. “And you fought to preserve that.”

Kylo looked at her then, beseeching, defeated. "I did what I did. And I came home to find there was no home for me. Except with the First Order.”

“And the price?”

“A job needed doing.” He tilted his head and worked his jaw, avoiding her gaze. “Snoke needed muscle to build his outpost, strength to enforce his laws. An Alpha’s Alpha.”

“Someone to do his dirty work, behead those who disobeyed or outlived their usefulness.”

The look he shot her was resentful, but he did not refute her accusation.

“An Alpha without a purpose is—”

“A wretched waste,” she finished tartly. “Destined to die of blue devils. And an Omega is just the same, gasping with unmet needs until their last breath. Yes, I received that education too.”

“What do you really _ know_, though, about being an Alpha?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “I could ask you the same about being an Omega! What do you know of my struggles?”

“None, as you will not speak about them,” he retorted. “Nor explain that letter.”

“Drop it!”

“Fine!”

Angrily, he pulled the soup back towards himself and shoved spoonful after spoonful of bear meat into his mouth. He chewed with vigor, glaring at her as he did so.

Rey crossed her arms, trying—and failing—not to pout. All this talk of the war and the horrors of the past had drawn her in, though she’d tried to resist. She had meant not to speak to him at all, yet here they were having a full-blown debate.

Curse him.

Suddenly, his expression softened; he held the spoon out to her. Later, Rey would go over this moment and again, trying to understand what he’d seen in her bearing or her face, why his anger had gentled. But in the heat of the moment, she responded by snatching the spoon from his hand, ignoring the shiver that passed down her spine at the brush of his warm, calloused fingers against her own, and leaning forward to devour the last of the soup.

Only a bit of broth and a few spare potato lumps were left by the time she heard him murmur, “I don’t know how to be anything other than what I learned to be—an Alpha who could survive in this world.”

“You could change,” she said, hope setting her sated stomach aquiver. “I… I could help you.”

In response, he let his head loll back against the wall behind him and glowered up into the shadows under the roof. If Rey were to choose one word to attribute to his expression, she would have been forced to call it disconsolate.

He gave no other reply.

. . .

“What do I smell like to you?” he asked Rey, some time later, moving past the offer she’d made him.

One he did not think he could accept.

The question earned him a leery, sideways glance and a shake of her head.

“To me, you smell like breakfast,” he supplied, puffing out an amused breath. He watched for her response but she simply frowned. “Baked sugary things and bread and fresh, hot coffee.”

A beat.

“You smell like winter and smoke from a woodfire and… and roasting chestnuts,” she said in a low voice, like it was a shameful secret.

“Betas don’t have that.”

She sucked on her teeth in lieu of a reply.

“They stink of sweat and skin. Perfume, maybe.”

She pulled a silver toothpick from her pack and began to use it.

“They can’t scent us like we scent each other.”

She kept her eyes downcast as she worked, following the trail of footprints in the hard dirt floor, from one end of the room to the other and back again, refusing to meet his gaze.

“They were never going to understand what we are, what we need.”

That cracked her. “_You _ don’t understand what I need either.”

“I bet it’s not in Jakku.”

Her response was like a detonation. She burst up onto her feet and whirled towards her knapsack, gathering her things together in a frenzy. For an instant, she eyed the pot, in which there still remained an iota of soup. But he saw the moment she decided to leave it behind; she pulled in a deep breath and blew it out her nostrils, then spun on her heel and made for the door.

Panic.

Deep, possessive, ugly, warbling panic sliced at Kylo, needles in his overheated flesh.

“Wait!” he yelped, struggling to his feet.

He was stiff, aching, but he could not let her go. Not out there, to her death, to an uncertain future that did not include him. Not when her smile, her laugh, her scent, her quiet snoring in her sleep, all of it brought him so much contentment, an emotion he had not felt for so long.

Any time Rey left would be too soon, by Kylo’s estimation, but this was particularly cruel. They’d only just begun to truly speak to each other.

Gritting his teeth against the pain brought on by moving, he propelled himself across the cabin and cut her off at the door. He leaned back against it, panting, and stared down into her eyes.

“Dont,” he breathed out. “The storm.”

“Fuck the bloody storm, and fuck you.” She was fuming, glaring up at him, eyes narrowed, murderously angry. “I told you not to mention the letter again!”

“I want… want to underst—”

But she cut across him, “I don’t owe you anything!”

“I saved you from the bear,” he pointed out.

“And _ I _ spared your life when I could have ended it! _ Twice_!”

“Please,” he said, dropping to his knees. She startled when he grabbed a hold of her hips—a terrible risk and he knew it, he had the scars to prove it, but he had to try—and then she flinched when he pressed his face against the billowing clothing protecting her belly.

She was softer here than he had expected, although he could feel the sharp jut of her hip bones, even through her layers. But her scent was stronger. Intoxicating.

“It’s terrible out there. I promise you if you leave tonight, you’ll be dead by morning.”

He hoped, by hiding his face in the threadbare garments, that he might soften the harshness of his words. And for a torturous moment, he could not be sure if his gambit had succeeded; she stood stone still, neither pulling free from his grasp nor embracing him in return.

It was like he had frozen her with his touch. But he knew he hadn’t, because her body was warm. Blissfully warm.

“Un…hand me,” she said at last, voice breaking. “And move.”

He could have forced her to stay. He could have tied her up again, he could have refused to obey her command. But what good would it have done?

His Omega was a fighter; Kylo felt compelled to respect that. So he shuffled to the side, leaning back against the wall, and raised his eyes to steal a final glimpse of her face before she left him. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, even now.

The door sprang open, as it had when he’d opened it this morning. And how strange to ponder that they’d only been in this hovel for a day; so much had happened, it felt like ten lifetimes had transpired. Rey stooped, bracing herself against the frigid wind. Sharp-flaked snow blew into the cabin, and she turned away to protect herself from it. With an angry squawk, she slammed the door shut again. 

Her eyes, shadowed from this angle, slid down to meet Kylo’s.

“I’ll help you get to Jakku,” he said. “Help you find your folks or whatever else you’re looking for down there. Just… don’t leave tonight.”

She made a soft, helpless sound in her throat.

Then, unspeaking, she turned from him and shuffled back to her side of the cabin. The knapsack fell to the floor with a heavy thud; Rey followed a moment after. She did not look at him, did not utter a word to him, directed her back to him as she curled up on her deerskin. An admission of defeat.

“I don’t need your help,” she threw over her shoulder, a suspicious nasality to her voice, “And I don’t want it.”

They both fell quiet after that.

Kylo took no pleasure in her frustration, and felt more hurt than he wanted to admit from her rejection, but he _ was _relieved. For now, at least, she would stay.

. . .

Years of bed-sharing at Saint Padmé’s had made Rey very adept at crying discreetly. She could do so without the shaking of shoulders and gasping that sometimes accompanied an outpouring of emotion; at the moment, she was employing those skills.

The tears burned tracks over the bridge of her nose, across the tops of her cheeks and onto the back of her hand, which she’d wedged under her head as a sad sort of pillow.

She could almost _ feel _ Kylo’s tentative desire to do something from across the room; it was palpable, and she thought maybe she could detect it in his scent somehow. There was a potency to it that had not been there an hour ago. But she did not care.

He had been warned about bringing up the letter.

That he’d read it, that he knew its contents and her destination, rankled her to the very core of her being.

What would he do with that information?

And what had he been trying to prove, by bringing it up? That he deserved to know, because he’d shared his own pain?

Rey grit her teeth to keep from crying out in indignation. She took deep breaths, steadying herself. She wiped her cheeks until they were mostly dry.

But she did not roll over and did not engage Kylo Ren in any further conversation.

Now, truly, she was certain that they had nothing else to say to one another. Or in any case, _ she _ had nothing else to say to _ him_.

. . .

Yet when she woke sometime in the dead of night to the sound of the wind shrieking as it tore into the world outside the cabin walls, Rey found herself warm and comfortable, cozy in a way she could not at first comprehend.

Upon opening her eyes, she comprehended. But in doing so, the man—the Alpha, the executioner, the _ murderer_, she reminded herself desperately—became more of a mystery to her than ever.

For he had removed his great shaggy bear-skin coat and laid it over her at some point during the night. The scent of woodsmoke and chestnut and frost was thick in her nose, and it soothed her; Rey hated that it did so, but she drew the coat closer around herself and burrowed down deep into it.

Content, resenting that contentment, she drifted back to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://annaakhmatova.quillsliteracy.org/true-tenderness-78/)?
> 
> Some interesting facts about [bear meat](https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/11/13/363793521/why-the-invasivores-havent-pounced-on-bear-meat).
> 
> More on [dressing and cooking](https://www.gohunt.com/read/skills/things-to-bear-in-mind-with-bear-meat) bear.
> 
> A video I watched to get a better idea of how to [tan bear hide](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7-t71WOsog). **While not gory, the video does show people manipulating the bear's skinned pelt so please click at your own discretion.**
> 
> Did you know that there is a [Mastodon Township, Michigan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon_Township,_Michigan)? Fun thing I learned while reading about [mastodons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastodon) and [woolly mammoths](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth), which, I did not realize before writing this chapter, [were not the same animal](https://www.nps.gov/articles/mammoth-or-mastodon.htm)!
> 
> Finally, check out the [wikipedia article on so-called "freakshows" or "sideshows"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freak_show) for a little bit of the interesting but very sad history of that particular phenomenon.
> 
> Okay, that's it for this chapter. Thank you for reading! 💚


	11. By morning I had vanished at least a dozen times into something better.

**There is no particular reason why she wakes so early on that particular morning. She simply does.**

**“A frog, placed in a pot of boiling water, will leap its way to freedom,” Mother Maz once told her class, a non-sequitur during a lesson on Noah’s Ark, “But a frog placed in tepid water will linger, complacently, as the water heats.”**

**She’d paused for dramatic effect, an enigmatic smile tugging at her lips.**

**“It cannot sense the danger, perhaps. Or it thinks it can wait it out. Thus, it will be boiled alive.”**

**Henrietta has often reflected on those words and wondered if frogs possess the ability to reason. If they offer themselves assurances as the water around them begins to churn, as the temperature rises. **

**Do they laugh away their fears? Do they scoff at the idea that ** ** _this _ ** **is how they shuffle off this mortal coil? Do they think of a future where this agony ends? Do they train their mind on such a future, to avoid focusing on the present?**

**Henrietta is seventeen and the Catastrophe is a writhing, stormswept sea around her. Just as she brings herself to the surface and steals a breath of fresh air, another wave washes over her, dragging her under again. It is getting hotter.**

**Last spring, she lost Quinar and Devi and Namenthe. All wiped out by the Lover’s Death. She’s had word that Odavia, who long ago was adopted and moved out of the city, has also been taken by the disease. Ivano has become a shell of himself; he hides in the church most days, praying to Saint Padmé to save them all. Little Bebe has disappeared, run off in the dead of the night, as have many of the other savvier, street-smart children. Nobody knows where they’ve gone; in the chaos of the bombings, no one has been able to find them.**

**Frogs leaping from the pot, perhaps.**

**But not Henrietta.**

**Sister Dosmit has stayed, so Henrietta stays as well. With the home so empty, so many Omega foundlings and orphans missing or deceased, much of the former dormitory has been converted into a hospital, and their days are busy tending to the sick and the wounded and the dying.**

**The bombs have been falling intermittently for weeks, at all hours of the day or night. Henrietta does not know who is bombing them or why. When she asks Dosmit or Maz or any of the others, she is met with stony silence and a swift change in subject.**

**She can see the smoke, though, rising like a colosseum’s worth of fearsome columns towards the perpetually darkened sky. And the rubble, from the bomb that landed at the end of the street last week. When it detonated, it was the loudest thing she’d ever heard; louder than any train or newspaper boy, louder than the flying machine that delivered it, loud enough to make the windows shatter and her bones ache.**

**They’ve boarded up the windows, but there’s no remedy for her aching bones. She works long days, helping Dosmit or venturing out into the streets with Mother Maz to care for the wounded of the Omega district as best they can.**

**It’s all such chaos, and Henrietta understands so little of it.**

**This sunrise, she understands least of all.**

**Not the dawn itself; that is the same as it ever was. This morning’s is brilliant, strata of cloud layering each other in the sky in shades of marigold and saffron and persimmon, like the heart of a flame.**

**What was the rhyme Dosmit taught her once, about sunrises and sunsets? Henrietta wracks her memory until it comes to her:**

** _Red at night; sailor’s delight. Red in the morning; sailors take warning._ **

**Dosmit stands in the middle of the garden, a shadow, her feet bare in the dewy grass. Her back is to Henrietta; her emotions are safely hidden, as they usually are. But there are clues: her arms wrapped around herself, hands on her waist, slightly hunched, as though she is protecting a wound in her abdomen.**

**Henrietta has seen enough abdominal wounds by now to know that defensive hunch.**

**In her dressing gown and pyjamas, not her usual tunic, scapular, apron, and coif, Dosmit does not look like herself. Henrietta is being given a rare glimpse of Dosmit the woman, not Dosmit the nun.**

**Dosmit the woman has thin, lank hair, a silvering blonde. It falls past her shoulders, and the red-gold sunrise lays a diadem of rubies around the crown of her head. **

**Henrietta has never seen Dosmit’s hair before. **

**Dosmit the woman looks so diminished and so tired. There is defeat in her posture.**

**How Henrietta wishes she could see her face, or go down to the garden and throw her arms around Dosmit the woman. Comfort her, speak the right words, do the right thing, make it better. But this feels like a private moment, one on which Dosmit would not welcome intrusion, so Henrietta turns from the window and heads off to begin her rounds. There is always so much to be done.**

**Yet she puzzles over what she’s seen for days afterward, wondering what Dosmit was looking at—or if the question is even what she was looking ** ** _at_****, and not what she was looking ** ** _for_****.**

**She never finds the right words to ask.**

* * *

In the morning, Rey woke to the sound of the storm and that of someone softly groaning. She rolled over, rubbing her eyes. It was Kylo, she realized, once she’d cleared the sleep from them. There were beads of sweat rolling down his bone-white face; his hair was damp with it.

He was tossing restlessly. She could see the shifting of his eyes as they roamed, back and forth beneath his eyelids, perhaps searching for something within his dreams.

The chill that had permeated the air, at least, she could easily solve. She rose, drawing her coat close as she lurched out into the storm. Would it ever break? Would they be here for the rest of their lives, trapped together in a one-room cabin the size of a bread box? Rey forced such dismal thoughts from her mind, focusing instead on the gathering of logs. She hurried back inside and built up the fire again.

She would not die here. Not when her family was waiting for her.

The next problem to be dealt with was Kylo’s health. It would have been easy enough, she supposed, to let him die. Rey had seen men in his condition before; it was possible that he’d caught the Lover’s Death somewhere between the outpost and here, yet when she laid a hand to his brow and found it feverishly warm, she suspected that it was not a virus that had taken hold, but infection.

If she was going to save him, she would have to act soon.

And she would have to undress him.

. . .

It took her all of an hour to decide.

For an hour, she warmed herself by the stove and watched as he grunted and whimpered, thrashing against whatever assailed him in his slumber.

He was not a good man. He had fought for the very forces that had corrupted this world, for the same people who had created the poverty-stricken Omega district, who had forced Dosmit and her ilk into a convent, who had written new laws to redistribute rights according to designation, who had experimented upon Alphas and Omegas to see if they could play God and profit off of the population’s desperation to decide their own designation, who had used the results of those experiments, which they had failed to quarantine and which had created a pandemic, to craft chemical weapons, who had written new curriculum for schoolchildren so that they might grow up believing that their whole lives, all their dreams, all their skills, whatever they learned or loved or dreamed, came down to their 24th chromosome pair.

The horsemen, those faceless, unseen, hubristic figures of power. The bringers of doomsday. They who had broken the seven seals. Who had, with opened arms, ushered in the end of all good things.

His efforts on behalf of the Coalition for Designation were more than enough to condemn him to death, as were the deaths he’d handed out under the direction of Morfran Snoke, but Rey did not have it in her to withhold mercy. Not when she knew she could help.

And it was a wonderful novelty to feel hope after so long without it; she craved that fluttering in her stomach, that rabbity quickening of her pulse. For most of her adult life, the world had been careening into dissolution and there had not been a single thing that she could do about it except try to lessen the suffering of the dying.

But this. This man, whose suffering she could ease, whose infection she might vanquish… she could save his life, and it might amount to something.

Even if it didn’t, at least she would not have to ride out the remainder of the storm with a corpse. That, she imagined, would not be worth whatever moral victory she might feel at his dying from the wounds she had bestowed.

So she took one of the pails of melted snow-water and placed it atop the stove.

Then she turned to him, gulping down deep, bracing breaths, and tried to determine the best way to get him out of his vest and shirt.

. . .

He was back in the Argonne.

A thick fog rolled across a field of shattered tree stumps and fallow earth, consuming everything in its path. It was coming towards him, and Private Benjamin Solo found that he could not move.

There was nothing to do but let the fog swallow him, let the poison work its way into his lungs and his bloodstream, feel the change beginning at the base of his spine and his glands and his cock, feel himself grow angry and hungry and senseless. A helpless scream rang out in the stillness. A moment later he realized the scream was coming from him.

He looked down at his hands, clenched into fists. They were red.

Blood. Everywhere, blood.

The fog became red like his hands. It was sickening. Intrinsically, he knew it was poisoning him, but still he could not move.

Then a shape emerged, close enough to startle him.

A woman shape, with shining brown hair that looked soft to the touch, and a sweet face like a mask, betraying no emotion. She was dressed in white. A gossamer slip of a dress, billowing, but nearly transparent; through it he could see her nubile form, high pert breasts topped by berry-sweet nipples and the alluring curve of a small waist flaring out into healthy omegan hips.

Rey.

Like a virtuous maiden from a fairytale.

“Wake up,” she whispered to him. “We’ve got to get those wounds clean.”

Puzzled, Ben glanced down at his body.

Blood. Old Alpha blood. He was drenched in it, as though he’d been baptized, his flesh and his uniform gleaming crimson-black in the dull, fog-strangled light.

“Is this mine?” he whimpered. "Am I dead yet?"

“Come on, Kylo, wake _ up_!”

With a jolt, he came to. There was a strong hand clamped on his shoulder, jostling him to wakefulness. The dream lingered for a moment, the fog still clinging, the image of Rey appearing in duplicate before him, one the Rey of reality, sunburned and bedraggled, dressed in a working man’s garments, and the other a beatific vision with her sheer white nightgown and long, flowing hair.

Closing his eyes, he shook his head. When he opened them, there was only the Rey he knew, sitting by his side in the warm, rustic cabin, her hand still resting on his shoulder.

“You’ve got a fever,” she informed him.

“Oh.”

“I need you to help me, you’re too heavy and I can’t undress you on my own.”

He gave a feeble waggle of his eyebrows at her. “Trying to have your way with me?”

His voice was little more than a rasping wheeze.

“Kylo,” she said, very sternly, “One or possibly several of your wounds is infected. If you don’t help me undress you and clean them, there is a good chance you’ll die. There’s a chance you’ll die anyway, if sepsis has set in.”

That made no sense to him; she had mentioned a fever, yet all Kylo felt was cold. He told her as much but Rey shook her head.

“That’s one of the symptoms. Now you _ must _help me.”

Her hand was sliding around to his shoulder blade, urging him to rise. With a groan, he heaved himself forward into a slumped, seated position.

“What hurts the most?” Rey asked.

He shot her a drowsy, sidelong glance. “Yes.”

She sighed. “Arms up.”

Once he’d commanded his arms to obey—it was disconcerting that they did not right away, that it was something of a struggle to lift them above his head—she worked quickly, ridding him of his vest, his suspenders, then his shirt, and finally his undershirt.

All were stained, blotches at the side a primordial dark red. Alpha blood. The dream washed over him, as though it were a tide that had only receded for a moment, and had merely been waiting at the edges of his mind.

“Alphic,” he muttered, blinking in wonderment and horror at the double sight before him, the cabin and the fog-shrouded battlefield, both at the same time, overlapping. “No… no escape… Old Alpha blood…” 

“You’re experiencing delirium.” Rey was frowning at him, one of her cool palms coming to rest on his forehead. It grounded him for a moment.

It felt nice.

Clean.

Then she reached for the makeshift dressing he’d wrapped around his ribs. It stung when the fabric pulled away from the skin. Though she wrinkled her nose as she did so, though she held the blood-encrusted length of cotton with the tips of her fingers, she did not recoil from his wound.

Kylo did. He dry-heaved upon seeing it. The cauterization had been shoddy indeed, and he had missed some of the wound. It was a gruesome sight: shiny in places, weeping, angry, caked with dried blood. There was a foul smell about him, coming from his own body.

Like rot.

“Fuck,” he gasped. “I’m fucked.”

“You’re _ not_,” she argued, tilting her head until he was forced to meet her eyes. They were green, like the moss on the rocks in springtime, and stern, and unyielding. They offered no quarter from the madness seizing hold.

Again, she shifted into the vision from his dreams. An angelic shepherd, here to read him his final rites and escort him down to where he belonged, to hell.

Wait. That wasn’t how that worked, was it? Why would an angel lead him to hell? No matter. It made no difference. 

_ Let me look upon something—someone—pure and clean, before the end, _ he thought.

“Look at me. Focus on my voice, Kylo. You’ll be alright. I promise.”

A gauzy veil seemed to fall over his eyes, and Rey’s face became a warm peachy blur amidst the darkness. His body was one contiguous bruise, throbbing in time with the faint sound of gunfire. His mind was a broiling hellscape. He was in the Argonne, drowning in a poisonous fog, and he was waking up to his deranged uncle standing over the cot in his spartan bedroom at the monastery and he was back at the outpost, kneeling, swearing his fealty to Snoke… He was everywhere, he was nowhere… 

Kylo sobbed.

. . .

It was bad, there was no denying that. His face, despite the swelling and bruising and ugliness of the knife wound, had benefited from the yarrow and its exposure to air and snow. It would heal. Not cleanly—he would carry a scar across his right cheek and brow and side of his throat for the remainder of his life—but Rey did not think it would trouble him. And while he hadn’t cauterized the bullet wound very well, meaning it would no doubt heal as a gnarled mess, that was _also_ not where the real danger lay.

The wounds bestowed by the grizzly, deep punctures in two parabolas halfway down his pale back, had already become infected. They were producing an awful stench and a frothing, weeping pus.

Gingerly, Rey rolled him over and guided him down onto his belly, careful to touch him as little as possible. Though he was as heavily muscled as an ox, he went without a fight, eyes sinking closed and whole body going lax.

“Je m'appelle Benjamin, je suis un noviciat,” he babbled to no one, as she took a glass jar from her bag. “Non, nous ne pouvons pas quitter le… le bunker.”

_Cloves_, she decided, rattling them around in their container. She'd stolen the jar from a chemist's shop in Maine on the off chance she might find herself with an infection such as this. So far she hadn't, thank Padmé. _And honey_, she thought, as she lifted up the jar the Resistance had gifted to her. Viscous and amber, it glowed like a jewel in the firelight; it would have to serve as a salve before the wounds were redressed. 

She tsked in vexation, once again sore with herself for finishing the rye. Alcohol would’ve been better than either of these for flushing out that which was ailing him.

Drinking it was foolish. She had not gotten this far by being foolish, and she would not get much farther if she continued to be. Everything needed to be rationed, every choice wisely made.

Oh, well. There was no undrinking the rye; she'd have to do what she could with hot water and ground cloves and honey.

“Se déshabiller pour moi, mon délicieux ami?”

“Mmhmm.” 

Not really listening, she picked up the empty pail and unlatched the door. She filled it halfway with snow, squinting against the sharp wet flakes flying into her eyes, then returned to the cabin and placed it atop the stove, beside the other.

“Je le regarde et il me regarde.”

“All right.”

“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep—” 

“Oi—there, now,” she murmured, drawing solace from the lull of routine. Boiling water and tending infections; this was familiar territory. “None of that. We'll have you right as rain in no time.”

. . .

Everything had reached a fever pitch inside Kylo. All of reality reduced to this: a sharpened nail screaming out in protest as it scraped along a board of slate.

Too loud, too sharp, too bright, too hot and then suddenly too cold. Too much pain.

Rey was too close and at the same time, too far.

He was going to die here.

He should have spoken to the woman whose name he would—_no_, he interrupted himself mid-thought, _there is no more time left for artifice_.

He should have spoken to _ Leia_.

To his mother.

Should have asked her why she sent him away. Should have begged her forgiveness. Should have offered to go find his father. Should have asked if she loved Poe in lieu of the son who had disappointed her, if his easygoing Beta charm reminded her of Han. Should have rescinded his allegiance to Snoke and given her all of the First Order’s secrets.

He might have ended up here anyway, might have died just the same.

But at least he might have been mourned.

. . .

She sat by his side while she waited for the water to heat, grinding up the cloves in the cleaned-out pot. When he grunted, distressed, once more submerged in a fitful sleep, she paused in her task and pressed tentative hands against his lank hair.

This was not the part she was good at. Had never been good at, despite the societal expectation that Omegas made natural caretakers; she had always done a sufficient job back at Saint Padmé’s, but had never been able to leave either her patients or her wards feeling comforted by her presence, let alone the poor excuse for platitudes she would drum up.

“You’re alright,” was what she came up with, now.

She thought he tucked his chin in a nod, but could not be sure. So she took to detangling his dark locks gently while she hummed an old nursery rhyme. Knot by knot she worked, until it looked tamer. All the while, she kept an ear out for the stove, listening for the hiss and murmur of boiling water. When it came, she made to stand and move away. Kylo’s hand shot out, clamping around her booted ankle like a shackle.

“Je ne partirai plus,” he whimpered. “D—don’t—” 

Rey had met a frenchman aboard Captain Solo’s ship on her passage to Halifax, but he had never spoken like Kylo did now. Though Kylo's voice was deep and rich and pleasing, his accent was nasal, sort of, that slow, over-earnest twang that she imagined came from growing up on American beef and gunmetal. His French was the same; twangy.

“Just cleaning your dressings,” she said, in the most soothing tone she could muster. “Then we’ll clean your wounds.”

The platitudes came more easily with him, for some reason. There would be no introspection as to what those reasons might be. Not yet, anyway.

When she was far away from him, and safe, and knew with absolute uncertainty that she would never see him again, she would spend any amount of time she pleased unpacking this encounter. The rest of her life, such that it was, if she so chose.

Until then, she had dressings to sterilize.

. . .

With the dressings, the sleeveless remains of his shirt, his undershirt, and his suspenders all draped to dry over her pack, by the stove, whose fire she had stoked and fed before carefully bringing the pail over to Kylo’s body, she was ready to begin tending to him.

She would use some of her heat rags. They were stained, but she was always careful to clean them with boiling water. They would do the job well enough.

Now there was no more putting it off—she had to touch him.

This, Rey dreaded more than the festering claw marks.

She laid a stabilizing hand on the firm bit of muscle beside his shoulder blade. He had gone still, and remained still now. She was glad for that; he seemed to have found some relief, out beyond the world of dreams. A deep sleep, she hoped.

His back gleamed in the diffuse, oilskin-filtered light. A sheen of sweat was already cooling on it. He was a big man, broad, somehow even more so now that his form was not partially obscured by his garments. And the planes of his back were manifold; muscle layered over muscle told the story of a man who had been laboring for years.

Was this all from swinging a sword? It didn’t seem likely to Rey.

As gently as she could, she swiped the dampened heat rag across the punctures. Kylo awoke with a hiss; his whole body went rigid.

“‘S’alright,” she murmured. “Stay still, if you can.”

“_Ow_.”

“I know.”

Though he remained tense, those heavy muscles thrown into sharp relief, he did as she’d ordered.

With a few more passes, they were cleaned of pus. Next she began to dab the clove poultice around their edges. That would need to sit for a while. Then she’d rinse it and apply the honey.

“Strange that you don’t have more hair. Thought Alphas were hairier.”

He seemed to have almost none upon his back and his chest; only his arms had a dusting.

“Strange you’re not sweet-tempered—thought Omegas were supposed to be,” he sent back, ornery.

In light of the pain he was probably experiencing at the moment, Rey decided to let that pass without comment.

“One for sorrow, two for joy,” she began, lilting and off-key, under her breath. “Three for an Omega girl, four for an Alpha boy…”

“Five… for silver, six for gold,” he picked up for her.

“You know that one?”

“I received that education, _too_.” Eyeing her, he went on. “Seven for a secret never to be told.”

“Eight for a wish,” she sang, too loudly and too brightly, as she repeated the process of cleaning and applying the poultice to the gunshot wound of his ribs. At the first contact between her warm, damp rag and that lacerated stretch of flesh, she saw Kylo flinch, his jaw tight.

“Nine for a kiss?” he grit out.

She arranged her lips in a prim, thin line and shot him a disapproving look, though she knew the pain was surely staggering for him at the moment. He at least had the semblance of mind to look somewhat sheepish. Then he sighed:

“Ten for a bird you must not miss.”

“All clean,” she said, dabbing on the last of the poultice. “Now turn your head, and let me do the same to your face.”

“To the wound you gave me?”

“In self defense, you’ve forgotten to mention.”

“Said I wouldn’t hurt you, wasn’t going to—”

“Would you have taken me to the First Order, if I’d laid down my gun and my knife?” she shot back.

Whatever the rest of his grumbling complaint might have been, it died on his lips. He rolled onto his side and offered up his maimed cheek.

Rey tried not to look into his eyes as she wiped it down, but they were difficult to avoid, as they were trained on her, searching, probing.

Awkwardly, she offered an olive branch. “Yarrow was a good choice—how’d you know to use it?”

“I live in the same world as you.”

It was growled out between clenched teeth, like an annoyed reminder, like he was offended that she could have ever forgotten such a fact. There was a sort of sense to it, she supposed; they’d all been forced to become resourceful, as the things they’d become accustomed to had ran out or stopped working.

Rey had, over the hundreds of miles she’d trekked, let the world and all its interests outside her mission slip away. What good had it been to her, to consider how other survivors were faring? What they’d had to relearn, the ways in which they had struggled? All she cared about was getting south to Jakku.

To her family.

In a very small voice, ashamed of herself for evening broaching the topic after she’d raged at him for doing the same, she asked, “Have you ever heard of it? Jakku?”

The look he shot her was somehow curious and reproachful. But he answered the question with a shake of his head.

“It’s nice there,” she bluffed, having never seen or heard of it before the letter. “Quiet.”

His response was mumbled, barely audible. Rey caught it anyway. 

“Everywhere is quiet now.”

Then he rolled back over onto his stomach and said no more. Neither did she.

. . .

It wasn’t until after she’d rinsed the wounds again and dabbed them with honey, then settled on the other side of the stove, that he spoke.

“The fur.”

“W-what?”

She’d thought he had fallen asleep again; it would have been a mercy, if he had. He needed rest, to regain his strength and help him fight off the infection.

“The fur. The hide.”

She leaned forward until she could see around the belly of the stove and found his eyes open. He had not moved but it was clear he was searching for her.

“Yes?”

“Please,” he said, softly. “It needs to be scraped and salted.”

The salt gifted to her by the Resistance was stored in a small sack in her pack. It was very precious to her; she doubted she’d find more along the way to Jakku. Every granule in that sack was most likely her last.

“I don’t—” she began.

“The fur will keep you warm. When you leave me.”

There was such plaintiveness to his voice, it almost inspired her pity. It certainly struck a nerve, though she would be hard-pressed to admit it aloud.

“Merely scrape it and salt it?” she affirmed.

She watched as he sighed, visibly relaxing. “Yes. Merely that.”

. . .

Once she was done her labors and had checked one last time on his wounds—honey applied and dressings dry, she wrapped the strips of cotton around his torso and face, using some of his undershirt so that the claw marks could be wrapped as well—Rey curled up in the deerskin and bearskin coat and she slept. The sleep was sound, nourishing, blissfully featureless.

She awoke suddenly, not know what had roused her. It took her several long moments to puzzle it out, then it came to her.

The wind. The howling, whistling, moaning, wailing; all of it was gone. What had taken its place was a silence beyond silence, muffled, the sound of a forest breathing, of snow settling on snow, of the world setting itself to rights again after being bombarded by days of wintry storm.

Donning the layers she’d shed while she slept, Rey slipped out into the night. The snow was deep, the going was not easy, but when she peered up through the now-bare branches of the trees, she beheld a sky so clear that the stars winked and glimmered as if they were just above her head, as if she could reach out and snatch them.

One in particular shone more brightly than all the others. Polaris, the North star. The pole star. Rey was no sailor, she did not know the rules by which the pole star could be used to navigate; all that she knew had been stolen from snippets of overheard conversation between the sailors of Han Solo’s ship and from Dosmit’s old stories.

Surely, though, if she turned her back to it and walked the other way, she would be going in the general direction of south? And either way, daybreak would confirm. What mattered most was that she move on, that she kept going. She had already lost so much time, first with the Resistance and now in that bloody cabin with that confusing, difficult Alpha.

Rey pulled in a deep lungful of sharp night air, then let it out, momentarily filling her vision with diaphanous white steam. The night was cold; the way would be challenging. He would probably need to clean and dress those wounds again, at least once. If not more. If she stayed, she could see him through. But she would lose more _ time_.

Honey could be lived without, she resolved. She would leave him the honey. If he was to be condemned to death, it would not be by Rey. If he was to be saved—beyond the measures she had already taken—it would not be by Rey. The means of his salvation would be left behind, for him to do with as he pleased.

Rey did her best to quell the sneaky beginnings of regret. They threatened to cage in her heart; she knew all too well they would claim it for their own if she was not careful. 

But there was no excuse for further delay. Her family was waiting for her. Had been. For too long, now.

Mind made up, she hurried back inside.

. . .

Sometimes it was difficult to make sense of the world when he first awoke. He would get lost in a world of dreams and memories; they would join forces to toss him around on the stormy seas of his own mind, and when he roused, he felt as though he’d been marooned in a time and place that, for many unsettling minutes, was unfamiliar to him.

Was he not still a boy? Should he not be rising in the nautical-themed bedroom of his youth? Or the drafty, unadorned cell assigned to him at the monastery? Or the barracks of boot camp, or the trenches in France? Or the train car he’d claimed as his own in the outpost?

No, no. It all came rushing back: the Omega, the hunt, the Hollow in the Rock, how her eyes had narrowed when she’d pulled the trigger and shot him, how she’d snarled as she sliced open his face, the fear and anger there; then the grizzly, a hulking beast that looked half-starved and out of its mind with hunger and a rage all its own, an animal rage, the rage of incomprehension, the rage of resentment that cannot find a home.

And then the cabin, and the soup, and the fever.

Broken now. At least, it felt so. For a time, he lay there calmly, ruminating. His thoughts were somewhat more ordered. He smelled of rank old sweat, but that could be remedied. The burn in his back and face and side had died down to a distant, dull throb. The wild vacillation between chills and inferno had abated.

His body and his mind felt like his own again.

Kylo opened his eyes.

The cabin walls loomed up around him. It was darker inside than he'd expected. But the fire was going strong in the stove, throwing a rubicund glow over everything.

Illuminating what was not there.

She was _ gone_.

Immediately, Kylo jackknifed to a sitting position, which pulled on the tight scabs of all his wounds and stung terribly, making him flinch and hiss. Her pack was gone, she was gone, and with her, his fur coat.

His eyes shot to the window. The oilskin had been replaced with the salted bear hide, stretched out across the frame and affixed to the wall with the nails he’d previously used.

It took many long, groaning-filled minutes for him to get his feet under him, but at last, Kylo stumbled to the door and flung it open.

The storm had passed. The world glittered a fresh, clean white under a bright morning sun. The tree branches—flush with Autumn’s finest offerings before the snow had kicked up—were nearly bare now. Stark black lines against an azure sky.

A blast of frigid air shook him from his stupor; he was letting the cold in. Numbly, barely recognizing his own hands—which were clean, even of the blood that had encrusted itself under his nails—Kylo dug some more of the bear meat out from snow bank where he’d buried it.

He returned to the cabin. Took one of the pails and placed it atop the stove. Threw the bear meat inside, not caring that it was not yet hot. Sat down beside the stove, staring at nothing.

She’d left.

Of course she had. How else could this have ended?

He sank down again onto to the dirt floor, but was hindered when he felt a strange shape under his lower back. Pointy edges, rectangular; he rolled over enough to pull it out from under him.

A thick book. In gilt lettering across its tattered cover: _ The Alpha and the Omega: the Science of the Soul_, by Doctor Anakin Skywalker.

She’d left him his grandfather’s manifesto.

. . .

When the bear meat had finally been cooked through, poorly, greasy and chewy and stringy—a gustatory nightmare—Kylo fell upon it, ravenous, uncaring of its unsavory taste and texture. 

If she’d been here, they might have made another soup together.

No. He shook his head as he chewed.

She was gone. He needed to reconcile himself with that fact. And it _ was _just that: a fact. Irrefutable, for the time being. All he had left of her was a book he’d never intended to read, a jar of honey, the bearskin drying and stretching over the shattered window, and the remainder of the meat. 

And his strength, returned to him, thanks to her.

And something else: uncertainty.

Confusion was taking hold of his mind. Confusion over the past, the present, and the future. How could she look at all that had passed and see it so completely different from how he did? Nothing about her made any sense. She’d shot him and then mended his wounds. She’d lashed out at him for bringing up her kin then asked him herself about Jakku. She’d scorned his opinions on the state of the world then left him _ this_, of all books.

The book that had started it all.

He could not get up and follow after her. Not in his condition, not unless he wanted to push himself to the brink of death once more. He needed time to heal from his wounds. Then, maybe, he could try to track her down. To do what—to thank her or trap her, to beg for forgiveness or love or answers or death—he did not know.

In any case, the first thing was first: healing. 

So he settled in to do just that.

. . .

But it was wearisome, truth be told. Recuperation, when sleep had been slept and wounds tended and food eaten, was merely a matter of lying very still and waiting.

Kylo was soon bored.

Sighing, grumbling, he reached for the damned book and opened it to the first page.

** _Introduction_ **

_ It was during my visit to a sideshow attraction in a brightly striped tent set up along the Schuylkill River, far from the numerous buildings and attractions of Philadelphia’s International Exhibition for the World’s Fair in 1876, that I was first introduced to the heretofore unresearched and unacknowledged variations in human physiology and, as I believed and have maintained from the moment of witnessing, genealogy. The fair itself was the first of its kind in the United States, a celebration of that great nation's one hundredth year of independence, and was known as the Exhibition for the Arts, Manufactures and Products of the Soil and Mine. Whilst filled with many interesting, innovative, and awe-inspiring attractions, nothing captured my curiosity quite as potently as the two individuals who sat upon a stage behind a curtain and a ticket fee of fifty cents, under that hastily constructed tent on that balmy afternoon in July. _

_ As I alone had brought my twin children along with me to marvel at the technological wonders, my late wife having been laid to rest many years prior, and they being at that time but the tender age of eleven, I entrusted them to a family friend, a Mrs. Breha O——, and paid to see the show. _

_ What I beheld next changed my life irrevocably. _

_ It was not a bearded lady or a sword-swallower or any other manner of freak that greeted me, as I had expected, but a clean and tidy couple, a man and woman, both clad in only dressing gowns. Once the seats had been filled, they divested themselves of their garments and, without any bit of stagecraft or showmanship, began to engage in the act of congress. _

_ To say I was aghast would be an understatement. What was this that I had stumbled upon? _

_ I was fully prepared to leave, and report the goings-on of this sideshow to the police at once, for surely they were violating some tenet of public decency, when I noticed an abnormality in the reproductive organ of the man that kept me pinned to my— _

Kylo broke off with a disgusted ‘_blech_,’ just barely restraining himself from throwing the damned book against the wall. People had read this? People had respected _ this_? This… smut? This meandering, vulgar drivel?

This was indecent.

He cast a furtive glance around the cabin.

Then he kept reading.

_ —seat. A swelling bit of tissue at the base of the organ, like a knot of flesh. And on her part, an excessive emission of slick, clear fluid from the place where they were joined, enough to douse both their lower extremities. As the coitus proceeded, these abnormalities became more pronounced, until the organ was buried as a sword in a sheath, where it remained. _

_ The pair clung to each other, appearing pained or ecstatic. Perhaps both. The barker explained to us that it would be some time before they could move, as the appendage situated upon the man’s organ kept him locked inside the woman. _

_ The show was over. But my work had only just begun. For _ _I needed to understand what I had seen; at that time, I did not. The only way to do so was to educate myself through intensive research. _ _What followed were years of interviews, dissections, blood samples, biopsies, long hours in my laboratory, strained eyes, strained pocketbooks, extensive reading and even more extensive travel. _

_ I hope that I may be excused for entering on these lascivious details, as I give them to show that I have not been hasty in coming to a decision to write and publish this testimony. My children are now the age of two and twenty. My research has led me to many peaks and valleys which could not be traversed with them at my side. It has been a lonely journey, and a difficult one. _

_ The work, however, merited the sacrifice. In my search for understanding, expedited by the Mass Presentation of ‘84 and the ensuing donations from patrons of the sciences, I believe I have found an answer for what I witnessed in that striped tent in the summer of 1876. _

_ I call them: Designations. _

_ There are three. _

_ I present to you now all that I know of them. _

Kylo tore himself away with a scoff. He stared at the bearskin in the window frame, weighing his options. Then he dragged himself over to the stove to feed it another log. For another protracted moment, he watched as the flames licked at the new tinder, pretending that he was not desperate to continue, to understand. Finally, giving in, he sank back down and curled himself around the tome, as a boy might a tale of adventure or derring-do. 

And he read on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://www.poetseers.org/contemporary-poets/mary-oliver/mary-oliver-poems/sleeping-in-the-forest/)?
> 
> What was the real-world [Argonne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meuse%E2%80%93Argonne_offensive)? In this version of history, the battle happens roughly around the same time, although the motivations and lines along which people [and nations] are divided are quite different. As is the toxicology of weapons like alphic gas [compared with, say, [mustard gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_mustard)].
> 
> Some good information on treating a [puncture wound](https://www.emedicinehealth.com/puncture_wound/article_em.htm#puncture_wound_treatment).
> 
> How to treat a selection of wounds with [home remedies](https://food.ndtv.com/health/7-effective-home-remedies-to-heal-open-wounds-1817835). Which is not to say that you _should_, simply that, according to this article, you _could_. And here is another, on using [all natural antibiotics](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/321108.php).  
  
How does one [monk](https://www.oregonlive.com/faith/2015/07/6_steps_to_becoming_a_monk_at.html)?
> 
> [I learned a lot about the names for all the items of clothings nuns wear from this one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_habit#Nuns).
> 
> What is [Polaris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris)? Here are two [interesting](https://www.naturalnavigator.com/find-your-way-using/stars/) [resources](https://folwell.mpls.k12.mn.us/uploads/steering_by_the_stars.pdf) on navigating by the stars.
> 
> What was the deal with the [Centennial Exposition aka the 1876 World's Fair](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centennial_Exposition)?
> 
> Who is [Mrs. Breha O——](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Breha_Organa)?
> 
> Where is the [Schuylkill River](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schuylkill_River)?
> 
> Anakin's introduction to his book is not _directly_ borrowed from Darwin's [_On the Origin of Species_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species) but I drew a lot of inspiration from it; check out a [PDF copy](http://darwin-online.org.uk/converted/pdf/1861_OriginNY_F382.pdf) if you're interested!
> 
> P.S. Maybe you were thinking to yourself, as you read Kylo's french mutterings in this chapter, "Self, this is very bad french. What's up with the very bad french?" And my answer to you is that it is intentionally bad, Google Translate bad, even, because in my headcanon for this fic, young Ben Solo never applied himself to learning it with any real enthusiasm.
> 
> Okay, I think that's all from me. Hope you enjoyed! Thanks for reading. 🤍


	12. Weeping thou walkest with him; weepeth he?—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, look at this beautiful aesthetic [piece](https://twitter.com/sofondabooks/status/1182398888390455296) Des made!! Isn't it gorgeous? It just totally nails the atmosphere, I love it so much. Thank you again for sharing it, friend! 💙

**Henrietta is twenty years old, and Sister Dosmit has fallen ill.**

**For years now, Henrietta has been tending to the sick and the wounded and the dying. She has lost most of them. She has lost all her friends; even Ivano has succumbed to the pandemic sweeping through Britain. She has lost nearly every patient that ever passed through the front doors of Saint Padmé’s. Wounded during the endless sieges on the city; or too starved and weak to be saved; mostly, though, she has lost them to the Lover’s Death, which incites a gradually rising, unrelenting fever, then nausea, and then, at the end, the symptoms of an insatiable heat or rut.**

**Henrietta is so tired of loss.**

**She must ** ** _not _ ** **lose Dosmit.**

**The nun is confined to her dormer bedroom, one of the many small rooms that line the hallway up in the attic of the home. Rooms where all the nuns and monks of Saint Padmé’s once slept.**

**They are mostly converted now; reserved for those who are dying from the Lover’s Death, in the hopes that their final days can be made more comfortable.**

**For ten days and ten nights, Henrietta has sat vigil at Sister Dosmit’s bedside. She feeds Dosmit as best she can, though there is hardly much food for sale at the local market. The food she feeds Dosmit is expensive, obtained through illicit means. It eats up her small cache of savings, earned doing odd jobs around the Omega district whenever she was not helping Dosmit or Maz. Now, spoonful by spoonful, she attempts to save the nun with beef broth, pottage, black pudding, and fresh milk.**

**As though nourishment alone can fend off the virus invading Dosmit’s body. As though food could undo biology.**

**The halls ring out with the absence of life. There is no laughter, no shrill screeching nor childish conversation. There are only the soft, pained moans of suffering. And silence. Up here on the top floor, a deathly hush blankets everything.**

**Henrietta lifts the spoonful of pottage to Dosmit’s mouth. “** ** _Please._ ** ** Please try, Sister.”**

**Pressing her dry lips together, Dosmit shakes her head. Her brow is beaded with sweat, her plain face is ash-white. Her silver-blonde hair is splayed out across the pillow, her grey eyes rove across the ceiling, searching.**

**A thick ache has settled in Henrietta’s throat. It moved in when Dosmit collapsed in the kitchen ten days ago and it shows no sign of leaving. Henrietta recognizes Dosmit’s symptoms; she knows how this will end.**

**But it cannot be. Not Dosmit. Not ** ** _her _ ** **Dosmit.**

**“Please,” she begs.**

**“Listen,” rasps the nun, her voice a scratchy, faded thing. “Listen, listen.”**

**Those sharp eyes snap to Henrietta’s. Where they have been unfocused and cloudy for days, now they peer up at her with clarity, with focus. Henrietta nearly weeps with relief. Here she is. Here is the clever woman who has guided her through so much, through childhood, through the Catastrophe, through adolescence and adulthood. Here is the woman who has raised her.**

**“You’ll be alright,” she tries to assure Dosmit. “I’ll see to it that you rise from this bed. You ** ** _will _ ** **recover from this.”**

**Dosmit shakes her head again. “No, no. Recovery is not… Listen. ** ** _Listen_ ** ** to me.”**

**“I’m here. I’m listening.”**

**“There is…” she trails off with a shuddering inhale, a wheezing exhale, and her eyes—always so perceptive, so kind, so wise—grow wet. Dosmit blinks rapidly, reaching for Henrietta’s hand. Her grip is surprisingly strong.**

**“Listen to me, Henrietta. There is something I must tell you.”**

* * *

What followed were ever-shortening days that slipped into weeks, all different yet all homogenized by the bleary sameness of privation and struggle.

And travel.

South, south, ever south.

Rey drove herself harder than she ever had before.

First, out of the Shawnee hills, which grew milder and milder until they kneeled down and gave way to rolling farmland.

Then, down to the banks of the Ohio. It was as Leia had advised; so wide, it could not be mistaken for anything else but the great snaking border between Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri.

And frozen over, blanketed in snow, just as glittering white as everything else.

Still, she stayed on the northern bank as she followed it, sleeping under trees that in springtime, she imagined, were nourished by its waters, eating from the bounty of food the Resistance had provisioned her and whatever she could hunt. Most beasts had taken to an early hibernation, no doubt spooked by the ferocity of the winter storm. Rey could not say she blamed them.

Leia had told her: _ follow the Ohio to Cairo. _

A rhyme, like those of her childhood. Easily remembered.

The bearskin coat she had stolen from _ him _ was removed only to perform the most perfunctory of ablutions before she would hastily pull it tight around herself once more. It was warm. A lovely thing to protect her from the bitter spell that had fallen over this strange land. She did not allow herself the luxury of wondering if _ he _was warm, if he was alive, if he was healing.

She’d left him honey and meat. She’d left him a salted bear pelt. Whether he fed himself, whether or not he made the pelt into a coat as fine as the one she had pilfered**—**that was entirely up to him.

. . .

No more blizzards waylaid her journey south, though it remained frigid and snow-covered. Not as she reached Cairo, so named for the rich fertile soil upon which it was erected, like that in the delta of the Nile, and for its position at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Not as she gave the city a wide berth, sticking to its dilapidated northern outskirts until she’d reached the banks of the Mississippi. Not as she put one hesitant, trembling foot in front of the other, forcing herself out onto the ice.

It was beautiful: everything blanketed in pure white, silent, still, sparkling. The only sound was her thundering heart, the only scent her own acrid fear.

_ The terrible, the miraculous, _ she thought, as she sank into the snow on the western, Missourian shore, sending up thanks to God and Padmé and all the other saints—that the ice had held, that she had not died.

And as she moved ever further into Missouri—to the west, along a line the map referred to as the St Louis Iron Mountain & Southern Railway—the sky overhead stayed a perfect robin’s egg blue, from late dawn to early dusk, until one day the snow turned to slush and muck, and eventually, some days later, to nothing.

The air softened at night, no longer sharp and painful to her lungs as it had been back in Illinois. How odd, for the world to be thawing, the wild flush of crimson-gold leaves returning, moving backwards from winter to autumn, even as the weeks crawled inexorably forward.

After the Mississippi crossing, after she’d passed mile after mile of sleepy, overgrown farm and plantation and factory, lily-padded lagoon and boggy swamp and shining silver-blue lake, after days spent marching through the clay and mud, after she’d crossed two rivers whose names she did not know as they were not written on the map—only that they rushed along, unburdened by ice, so she’d had to inch her way across the rotting, rusted bridges that traversed them—she came to a junction.

She came to it not long after she’d crossed the second river. The junction looked simple as could be on the map: one track led north, one south.

It was seemingly in the middle of nowhere. There were no cities or towns nearby, nothing but flat mucky farm and swamp and a small shack that had no doubt once served as some sort of control station.

The day was temperate. Almost warm enough for her to take off the bear fur, though she didn’t dare.

Was there an errant fear in her mind that he’d rush up and steal it if she did? That he’d appear as if summoned by magic? Perhaps. Weeks had passed with no sign of him. Dead or alive, it seemed their time together had ended. But even so… 

_ No, _ Rey thought to herself. _ You are not to think of him. Not yet. _

Exhausted from all the things she wasn’t allowing herself to think about, she laid down her knapsack and seated herself against the wall of the control station, closing her eyes, determined to rest only a short while, and not to make any more rash mistakes.

. . .

Arkansas was easy to walk through, mostly. At first. The same flat nothing she’d walked along in Indiana, and Illinois—and before them, in Ontario, and in parts of Maine.

Same as ever.

She could see for miles and miles in every direction. The sky overhead, whether painted a flawless cerulean or packed with heavy clouds that never emptied themselves upon her, was vast. Growing up, Rey had never known a sky could be so vast as it was on this continent. She’d first experienced the effect—as though she was trapped underneath a great overturned bowl—aboard Han Solo's ship, then in Nova Scotia. The awe she felt each time she looked up never really went away.

The world and her own history had already made her feel small, inconsequential. That vast sky was simply a reminder of her place.

The events of each day could be predicted with a fair amount of accuracy. Rey would wake up. Attend to her morning rituals. Break down the lean-to. Begin walking. Try to cover a few miles. Hunt along the way or hunt in the afternoon; she’d somehow managed to sneak up on a feral hog whose meat had kept her going for a while, in addition to chipmunks, squirrels, rabbits, and once, a groundhog, which had tasted awful no matter how many wild herbs she added to her pot.

Then sleep, with its murky dreams of mating and biting and knotting. Things she had sworn to herself a thousand times over she never wanted; in dreams, however, she had no control over her libido. In dreams, her desires were unchecked.

When she woke, however, it was back to the grindstone. The work, the walking. She was grateful for the labor of the day, grateful for the distraction.

And before her very eyes, Arkansas shifted. Now, at the edges of the world to the west, there rose precipitous peaks, dark-hued and mysterious. The Ozarks, she supposed. The farms of the Mississippi—rice and cotton, some fields still producing, but most gone to seed for lack of anyone to till and harvest—gave way to rolling hills, thickly forested with oaks, elms, and maples.

Rey kept close to the rails. Their gauge had changed since Halifax, several times over, not that it mattered to her. Many of the wooden sleepers were in disrepair, corroded by rain and snow. The rails themselves were rusting. They were being overtaken, slowly, by the brush. But the direction they ran remained the same, and that was all she needed.

The forestlands drew in close around the tracks, so each day, Rey walked along under a fluttering bower of marigold and saffron and tangerine and tiger and crimson and currant.

It was, she felt, a kindness, given by the land to those who lived upon it.

Thus she pushed on.

. . .

Without her book, there was no way for her to keep a precise tally of the days, as she’d been doing since she arrived in Halifax. In truth, they ran together, all of them alike in monotony and fatigue. But by Rey’s estimation, it was more than two weeks after crossing from Missouri into Arkansas—late morning, after a night spent sleeping in the brick depot of a town called Jedha—that she felt that same knocking at the attic door of her mind and gooseflesh prickling up along her skin and shivery intuition pushing her forward, faster.

Now she knew all too well what these responses meant.

Kylo Ren had caught up with her.

He was drawing close.

Fear choked her. It was irrational, yes, but inescapable; fear was her constant companion, was _ every _Omega’s constant companion. She thought of the frozen Mississippi, of how each time she had trusted her weight to one of her feet, the snow had crunched and the ice had groaned. And beneath, just one wrong step away, death had awaited her. Beckoned her. A vision of it was there in her mind, when she closed her eyes: rushed along by the current, unable to break through the ice above, drowned, trapped. 

Dark, silent, frozen, death.

Rose's words came back to her, and the memory of that jagged fortress. The terror of a silence that ended all things.

This was her first response. But Rey breathed in a few deep breaths, releasing each one slowly through her nostrils, until her galloping heart calmed and rational thoughts surmounted the fear.

She had bested Kylo before. Several times. He might be healed or he might not, but he was still going to be diminished; she didn’t have the pistol or bullets, but she _ did _ have her hunting knife and an unloaded rifle that made a fine club. _ There is little danger_, she told herself. _ At least not from Kylo Ren. _

Thus, the next response was outrage.

How _ dare _he follow her?

What did he think was going to happen? Did he think that just because she had seen to his injuries, left him the company and solace of a great man’s words, that she was offering herself as his to claim?

If so, she’d set him to rights soon enough.

Next, came wonder. 

She could not help it; she had to admire that he’d unearthed himself from that cabin, trudged through the same deep snow she had, and located her all these hundreds of miles away. Regardless of his moral fiber, it was an impressive feat.

The final response, a brief flare of something in her chest right before she settled in to resignation, could only be described as satisfaction.

He could have died, but she had shown him mercy and he had _ lived_. By _ her _hand. Those final years at Saint Padmé’s had not been an utter waste. Though her education had never progressed beyond primary school, her mind was still agile, and she had learned much during her time as Dosmit’s assistant.

She had done something. Saved something that might have otherwise been destroyed. A difference had been made. 

Even if it was just in the life of a murderous Alpha.

. . .

The thing that soon enough congealed all of these emotions into a leaden pit of vexation in her stomach—aching, preventing her from enjoying meals—was that while he was near enough that she could sense him, Kylo Ren had apparently decided not to reveal himself.

His scent was there on southward winds, same as before: chimney smoke, roasted chestnuts, the first breath of winter frost. And there was something else tangled in, something Rey could not identify.

Something soft. Something tender.

But no embodiment of the man appeared. Just a scent.

Was this how it felt to be one of the countless rabbits and squirrels that Rey had tracked and eaten? She pondered that as she walked the rails each day, making her way towards Little Rock.

After what had passed between them, was she no more than prey? Or did he tail her for more sentimental reasons?

Whatever the answer, she found that she did not take much pleasure in it.

. . .

Milder it may have become, colorful though the leaves were, Rey knew winter was progressing all the same; the days were growing shorter, the nights long. Despite how far south she had ventured, there was frost on the ground at dawn and a slight chill in the air that lingered until late morning. And clouds had taken up residence in the sky, packed low and leaden, never unburdening themselves but simply choking out the sun, making the days dismal and bleak.

It was just such a grey morning, outside the brick train depot of Lothal, a town located halfway between the Missourian border and Little Rock, that Kylo made his first mistake in a while.

He overslept.

Which is how Rey discovered that at night, he’d been passing her and making his camp south of hers.

The motivation for that, she could not discern.

Through the leafy golden underbrush and trees, she spied him: big black boots sticking out of the opening of a canvas tent, bigger than her lean-to but not by much. There was a pit of ashes not far from the flap, over which stood a tripod. An iron pot hung from a chain within the three legs, the handle of a spoon jutting out from under its lid.

Where had he gotten all _ that_?

For an instant, Rey hesitated, torn between overtaking and interrogating him. But she recognized that he’d sussed out her game; if he was following her, and he’d seen her map, and he knew her destination, then he knew she was following the tracks. She would not underestimate him so much as to think he didn’t _ remember _the letter or the map or their terse conversations about Jakku.

There would be no shaking him except in the short run, and it would require abandoning the tracks.

That would be unprofitable; a foolish risk.

Maybe this was one too, she conceded to herself, as she ambled down the stone ballast and then into the brush, headed towards his tent. But it was a calculated one.

. . .

He looked so gentle in sleep.

The gash across his cheek had healed as well as could be expected. It was undressed, not infected; the seams of his skin had grown back together. There would always be a scar there. _ Her _scar. Rey could not help but gloat a little bit at that, though she knew pride was a sin.

Served him right.

She worried her lip as she studied him. Loath though she was to admit it… the scar was becoming on him. She liked that he was marked. By her.

Before she succumbed any further to such a licentious train of thought, she reared back and gave a solid kick to the sole of his boot. He awoke with a start, sprung up to a seated position, and smacked his head on the poles of his tent, unleashing a torrent of profanities.

“Fucking fuck, what the devil is that cocksucking son of a whore—”

The rest of the words withered away at the sight of her, standing there with her Winchester held like a billy club, ready to swing at him.

He was as solid as she remembered from her first sighting; she wondered how he’d done it, how he’d recuperated, how he'd been sustaining himself on the journey. Surely vermin alone were not powering a body that big.

The bear pelt had not been fashioned into a coat as fine as the one Rey had on—and from that she deduced that he had not been the original’s tailor—but he’d shaped it well enough into a cape of sorts, fastened at his neck with the bear’s claws.

He reached for the pistol, secured in his repaired holster. Didn’t draw it, didn’t tip back the hammer; just held his arm across his body, and kept his hand on the grip.

The knife Rey had carved from antler was tucked into the top of his right boot.

“You are _ still _ following me,” she told him, flatly.

It was as though it had taken him until that moment, when she spoke to him, to believe she was real. His eyes went wide and his nostrils flared, then he raised both hands in surrender.

“I’m… I'm not.”

She merely glared at him. “I suppose you tracked me from Illinois?”

Kylo sighed his defeat, then lowered one of his hands to tap the ridge of his proud nose. “Alpha,” he reminded her, as though she could’ve forgotten.

“Omega,” she snapped. “Just as good as yours.”

“Clearly.” His face was downturned and hidden from her, but she thought she caught the faint trace of a smile haunting his lips. “How long have you known?”

Rey shifted from one foot to the other, not wanting to answer that question. Not wanting to give him _ anything_. “You… you’ve healed, then?”

“Right as rain,” he said, echoing an assurance she’d made him… was it a month ago? Two? She couldn't remember. Did _he_ remember that night? Was that a purposeful reference? His expression, when he looked up at her, gave away nothing. Rey frowned; she’d thought he was insensate then.

“Where’d you get all this… this _ stuff _ ? How’ve you even _ made _it this far?”

“Cairo,” he said simply, as though that answered everything. He lowered his hands and swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. “Rey, I want—”

“Haven’t you had enough yet?” she cut across him. “Of the things you want?”

He cleared his throat. “I want to see you safely to Jakku.”

She barked out a joyless laugh. “I don’t need that. The only real danger I’ve seen on my way has been you.”

“And a bear.” He didn’t meet her eyes.

“Would’ve killed it quicker if you hadn’t been in the way,” she retorted.

At that, he gave an indignant scoff but did not argue.

“If you ever try to tie me up again, I’ll kill _ you_.”

He nodded at her boots.

“We are… nothing to—we owe each other nothing,” she said, as much to convince herself as him. And then, for good measure: “Go home, Kylo Ren.”

With that, she gave a firm, final nod. She turned back to the tracks, satisfied with her dismissal. His answer chased after her, faint, awkward, as she resumed her trek:

“I can’t.”

But Rey did not want to hear his excuses. So she pretended she hadn’t.

. . .

Kylo Ren disappeared for four days.

She could still sense him, but very faintly. His scent was not in her nose day and night anymore, but it was just… a feeling. A glimmer in her mind, insisting that he had not gone all that far. The days passed without anything of interest happening—wake up, breakfast, break down the camp, walk the rails, hunt if she could, set up camp, supper, sleep, repeat—but when she began to see signs for North Little Rock, Rey prepared to make a circuitous loop around, through the edges of its northernmost suburbs.

No cities. Small towns, villages, maybe. But no more cities, not ever again.

She sneaked down around the western edge of Little Rock, then stuck to the banks of the Arkansas River as she backtracked east, looking for a bridge. The first she stumbled upon was, fortuitously, one dedicated to the railway. Like all the other dozens of bridges she had crossed in her journey, it had fallen into rusty, rotting disrepair. But it held fast for her as she traversed the raging current of the Arkansas, and that’s all she cared about.

Once safely on the southern banks, she again headed west, avoiding Little Rock proper, haunting its outskirts, until she was south of the capital, past the warehouses of the western rail yards.

That is how she came to find herself standing at another crossroads. There were several tracks headed out of Little Rock. Two, according to her map, were going west. But even with only her eyesight and an outdated map to abet her, she could see that one moved northwest, up into the hills and an area labeled simply, ‘Indian Territory,’ while the other headed southwest, into the Timberlands.

Both, she was pretty sure, would deliver her to Jakku eventually. Or at least, they would deliver her to Texas. From the map, she could perceive that one led to the so-called panhandle and one to the northwestern corner of the state. Both still bore the name of the rail she’d followed all the way down, the St Louis Iron Mountain & Southern Railway.

Which to take? As far as she could recall, Leia had simply told her to follow the tracks to Texas.

Thing was, there was no Jakku labeled on the map. It was, after all, from 1867. Rey could only suppose Jakku was a newer town. And just as she was sure both rails led to Texas, just as she felt certain that the territory west of Arkansas had been given a name and statehood sometime between when the map was printed and when the world ended, she was sure that Jakku was in Texas. It’d said so in the letter.

But she had no idea where _exactly_ Jakku was inside of Texas, and at this moment, standing under a sterling sky that spanned so big over her head she had the strangest notion that it was about to fall on her at any moment, she felt stymied by the enormity of each of these American states.

How in the bloody hell could she choose a path? A wrong choice might cost her months. Years, even. It might cost her everything. She might never get back to them.

What Kylo had once said to her, now she muttered to herself: “I’m fucked.”

From behind her came a shout.

“The left!”

Rey pivoted on her heels, squinting against the dull sunlight. Of _ course _ he had caught up to her. Of course he was standing there now, brim of his hat pulled low, his own knapsack settled on the sleepers beside him, watching her with arms crossed.

Of course he looked like he was enjoying this. Of _ course _he did.

“_What_?” she called back.

How had he gotten so close without her notice? He was no more than fifty paces away. Rey clicked her tongue, angry at herself.

“How did you—” 

“The left track!” He pointed at it for good measure. “Takes us south, under the Ouachita mountains. Easier terrain—save ourselves a lot of hardship!” 

Rey scoffed. As if this thousand-mile march she’d been on for over a year hadn’t been a hardship, as if her entire life was not one never-ending hardship. Turning back to the tracks, she followed them with her gaze as they diverged and continued on in separate directions towards the hilly, violet-hued horizon. She contemplated.

“If you take the left one,” came his deep voice from closer behind her, calm, impartial, “you’ll hit Texarkana in about three weeks. You could stock up on resources there—resources you’ll want before you head on. Provisions, water, that kind of thing. Noticed you didn’t do that in Little Rock. Or any other towns we’ve passed.”

She swallowed. “Did _ you_?”

“Mmhmm.”

That answered the question she’d mulled over the last time they’d spoken; he was surviving because he was not afraid of the cities or towns. Of people. Of Alphas.

Because they did not hold the same manner of threat to him that they did to her.

“What about you?” she wondered, casting her gaze back at him.

He frowned. “What _ about _me?”

“You can’t… you can’t just follow me…”

Another shrug from him, yet somehow different this time: insouciant, challenging. “Why not?”

“Perhaps I don’t want you to.”

“Fine.”

He was coming closer. The pebbly ballast crunched under his boots, just like the snow had. Without intending to, Rey thought again of the frozen, snow-cloaked Mississippi, and shuddered. _ The terrible, the miraculous. _She tightened her grip on the Winchester, ready to swing.

“I won’t follow you,” he said, as he drew level with her. He turned his head as he continued on, leisurely, along the tracks that veered to the left. “But I’m going to Jakku all the same.”

She could see, along with his pack, that he carried his broadsword on his back.

“How do you even know the way?” she snapped without thinking.

He whirled around, walking backwards at an odd, slow gait. Now he was grinning in earnest, clean-shaven cheeks dimpled, eyes glittering under the shade of his hat. “Found a better map.”

Rey seethed, and said nothing.

“I wager the question now is,” he went on, still moving backwards ahead of her, “will _ you _ follow _ me_?”

For a moment, all she could do was sputter out angry nothings. “Don’t—don’t—” 

When she realized he had no intention of slowing or stopping, she hoisted her pack onto her shoulders and ran to catch up with him. And he did slow then, to allow her to pull ahead, tipping his hat to her as she passed.

“This is _ my _mission,” she hissed at him. “Find your own.”

Again came a faint, slightly forlorn: “I can’t.”

Head held high, she sallied forth, choosing not to dignify that with a response. She didn’t want him to come along—it wouldn't do to bring a man like Kylo Ren home to meet her kin; no one in their right mind would have ever approved of him, that much she knew for certain—but she also couldn’t quite bring herself to hamper his efforts by hurting him. Again.

So it was that she accepted his escort, in that she did not shoot him.

He let himself lag behind, let her take the lead. But she noticed, with tiny glances stolen backwards, that he did not fall out of sight again.

. . .

Snow clung to the tops of the distant Ouachita mountains as they circumvented them, but along the railway, which ran down where the land was all low-lying lakes and forests, the clement weather held. 

The leaves were finished their turning. As they ventured deeper into the timberlands, the underbrush grew thicker, and tall pines loomed alongside scrubby oaks, waxen-leafed tupelos and holly, and swaying sweetgums, maples, and elms.

Rey wished she had taken that farmer’s book on North American plant life with her. From memory, she could identify these trees on sight, but she remembered next to nothing of their properties. Kylo—who after Little Rock, stayed about a hundred paces behind her—might have known. But she refused to ask him, refused to speak to him, refused to even acknowledge him. His scent was alluring, taunting her every hour of every day, and she resented him for it.

At night, he made his camp within view of hers. She could see the tawny dancing light of his fire as she sat at her own, could smell the aroma of his cooking as she prepared what little she had for herself. The food from the Resistance was long gone. She was back to surviving on what she could hunt. Lucky for her, Arkansasian winter did not seem to drive the animals to ground as the Ontarian one had. There was plenty of small game about, and she’d gotten quite adept at hunting with only her knife.

But whatever he was eating, it always smelled better than her own supper.

The bastard.

. . .

A week passed, and then another, and Rey became accustomed to seeing Kylo trekking along behind her. He made no attempt to speak to her, nor did he interfere in her business. It seemed he had been sincere when he’d told her he wanted to see her safely to Jakku.

_ But_, Rey wondered, _ what happens then? _ Once she’d arrived? Once she’d returned herself to her family?

She had given so much of her energy, of her will, of her focus, to the journey; she had very little imagination left for the details of the destination.

Whatever would come to pass… would come to pass, she resolved.

For now, she focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

They were waiting for her.

And she had already taken so long.

. . .

It was at the end of the third week that the sign for Texarkana appeared alongside the tracks. The forest had become packed with tall, swaying pines; she’d just crossed yet another river, this one wide and brown and snaking, disappearing around a bend not far from the bridge, when she spotted it.

It brought her to a standstill, as though the distance she had traversed to get to this point was finally catching up to her.

She was nearly to the Texan border. She was nearly _ home_.

As she had back in Illinois, as she had again and again since then, at every place she passed, she took a moment to drain her canteen and contemplate whether to circumvent or enter. What manner of settlement was it? Chandrila had helpfully listed its former population on the sign; Texarkana did not.

“Tired?”

The question was gentle; gently asked, and, she suspected, gently meant. Her hackles rose anyway.

“No,” she spat out.

“Liar.”

“You want to talk about lies?” 

She whirled on him; he was the closest he’d come towards her since Little Rock. She could count the moles across his pale complexion, but his eyes were on her, searching, so she cast her own down to her tanned hands. One held the Winchester like a walking stick, the other the canteen. 

Once, she might have been worried about her complexion, because people had told her she should be. It hardly mattered anymore. In point of fact, she thought it was better to be tan and freckled. She rarely burned or peeled as she had in the early months of her journey.

“I haven’t told you any,” he replied belatedly, brows furrowed.

“I doubt that.”

“Search me.”

“I’ll forego that pleasure, if it’s all the same.”

He shrugged, a flash of something crossing his features. Was it hurt? Rey bit the inside of her cheek. There would be no pity or empathy for him; he was an intruder on this journey, and she was not going to offer him another inch, lest he mistakenly assume he’d been permitted another mile.

“If you don't want to go into Texarkana, I will,” he said quietly, an offer or a threat.

She sniffed. “I don’t care what you do.”

“You might, when you’re out on the prairie and the plains.”

“Oh, leave me alone!”

She veered away, back towards the settlement, and made to storm off.

He did not comply; he followed with ease, his long legs proving hard to outrun. It was further fuel to her ire, how easily he kept up with her.

“Just wait,” he gasped, “Wait _ one _ night while I scavenge in the town. You don’t have to go in—I’ll do it for you. Let me _ help _you, Rey, that’s all I’m asking.”

“You haven’t the right to ask for anything!”

“I know!”

That gave her pause, enough to still her feet, and bring her eyes back to him.

“I know,” he repeated, with a shake of his head. “I _ know_.”

He didn’t meet her gaze. Steadfastly, he stared down at the rails.

“Then _ why_? Why come all this way?”

“I told you already,” he said, sullen. “I want to know that you’re safe in Jakku.”

“I don’t need that.”

“But _ I _ do.”

She blinked.

He gave a tentative upward flick of his eyes, just enough to steal a quick glimpse of her before he looked away into the trees. A deep, shuddering breath escaped him.

“You saved my life," he said.

“I almost took it, too.”

“But then you _ saved _ it, Rey. You… you didn’t have to do that. But you did.”

Something, a hard lump, was making it difficult to breathe. Allergies, Rey supposed. Nevermind that it was not the season for them, that the air was crisp and cold and free of pollen. It was certainly allergies sticking in her throat, pricking at her eyes. Nothing more.

“I won’t do it again,” she warned.

Kylo nodded. “I understand. Only… wait for me on the other side of town, tonight. We don’t have to travel together, you don’t have to speak to me. Just wait.”

“I’ll think about it,” she croaked, a non-answer, the best she could muster, despite the hard ache in her chest. Despite the tenderness she felt for him in that moment, despite the sudden urge to reach up and run the pad of her thumb down the cleft in his cheek. She balled her hands into fists around the rifle and the canteen, to better resist that unwelcome urge.

He huffed, his expression ironical. “I guess I’ll take what I can get.”

With that, she tipped her chin in a curt nod and he returned it, before they silently parted ways.

. . .

Belying her evasive reply, Rey lingered for some time after she’d ranged into the woods and returned to the tracks on the southern edge of town.

_ I’m just resting, _ she told herself, as she perched on the rails and watched the sun sink further and further down toward the western horizon.

_ It’s been a long day. I’ve gone farther than normal. I’m in Texas, I’m already in Texas. I’m so close now, and I’ll need to keep my strength up for the final leg of the journey. _

Nevermind that her eyes kept sliding along the tracks towards the leafless trees obscuring the town. Nevermind that something skittish and untameable had made its home inside her, leaving her with a feeling that her heart might leap up her throat and take flight at any moment.

Nevermind, nevermind, nevermind.

Dusk settled in, the whole world ringing out with the guttural croaking of herons, the eerie honking of bullfrogs, the plaintive call of a coyote.

That last one, Rey hoped, was coming from far away. Between her and Kylo’s battle with the grizzly and her tussle with that hog back in northern Arkansas, she’d had enough encounters with the fauna of this continent to last her a good long while.

Everything was shaded royal blue, the light falling fast, by the time she caught sight of a hulking shape moving towards her along the tracks. She waited until she could close one eye, hold up her hand, and compare his size with that of her thumb.

Then she rose, shouldered her pack, and set off into the trees to make camp, certain that he’d seen her, that he would not need for her to explain a thing.

That her presence alone would say it all.

. . .

“Following the track,” he began the next morning, as he approached her camp in the dim predawn, dropping three tins of beans at her feet and shoving a map from 1905 into her hands, “We should get to Jakku in about a month.”

She studied this new map, locating Jakku along the state's northern border.

“It's _ my _ decision what pace I set,” she replied, mulish.

“I know.”

Hands raised aloft like she had a gun on him, he backed away towards his own tent.

Rey sulked for a good long while, debating herself, before she finally gave up, sighed, packed up, and pointed her feet in the direction of west, clutching the new map in her fist.

. . .

They pushed on.

And on.

And on.

The landscape was ever changing as they followed the rails, first away from the rolling forests of southern Arkansas and then from the shaggy, piney timberlands of northeastern Texas. It didn’t happen all at once; it wasn’t as if they woke up one morning to find themselves beyond these places. But a gradual change was always taking place, marked by the distance between towns, which was becoming longer and longer. 

Somewhere after the first week and before the second, the trees turned to oaks and hickory and elm: squat, spindly, probably leafy in the summer but bare-limbed and grasping now. The soil beneath the rails became gritty and light; it got in Kylo’s nose and eyes when the wind blew, so that he resumed wearing his blood-stained kerchief over his face during the day.

The forest receded, became scrubbier and sparser, before giving way to grasses and bushes; the hills rolled on, but without the density of the timberlands, they seemed larger than life somehow.

The solemn grey sky went on for forever and a day.

And then the forest fully gave way to rolling prairie, with dark soil like black velvet, and shining ribbons of muddy creek that snaked through the waving grasses. Grapevines and green-briars reached up to choke the rails and take back the land upon which they were built.

And the whole time, there were so many things Kylo wanted to say to her. He’d had more than enough time to think on it: in that cabin, and on the long, long, _ long _ walk south, over the Mississippi and the delta and down through Missouri and Arkansas. Days and days he’d had, to come up with the perfect combination of words and actions. Even now, as they walked not together but in the same direction, he spent much of every day about a hundred paces behind her, watching her ever-thinner shoulders bob under her heavy pack, agonizing over all the things they could be discussing. How he’d apologize. Woo her. How he’d charm her, court her. How he’d thank her for the book she’d left him, and the honey, and the well-salted and stretched bearskin. For not taking the bear meat. For sparing his life, for _ saving _his life.

In his imagination, the words flowed off his tongue, each thought perfectly phrased, full of emotion, flattering her as a woman and an Omega.

His fear of her rejection held him prisoner. They had reached a tacit détente again. Just as last time, it felt precarious. Like one wrong word could send her running for the hills. And he wanted so desperately for her to stay.

Kylo knew what he was to Rey. He knew his place in this story now; when he’d reached the last page of his grandfather’s tome, and seen the tally of days she’d been keeping there below Anakin’s final proclamation on the topic of designation, the world had tilted on its axis, his role in the corruption of an idea as plain as day.

A footsoldier of tyranny.

Alpha, Beta, Omega… the whole system had been bullshit.

_ Stupid boy, _ he’d sneered to himself, finally grasping his parent’s parents disappointment, his uncle’s zealous scorn. _ Arrogant. Blind. _

He’d never had a mission in life that was his own. When he was younger, he'd been a fanciful child, full of dreams about sailing the world as his father had, of speaking to people with confidence and conviction, as his mother had. Of pushing forward, beyond the boundaries of what was known. Of seeing the world that belonged to his parents.

As he grew older, he’d only wanted to be seen, to be appreciated. And, absent that appreciation, his temperament had soured into something that, to his parents, had been abhorrent and unlovable. To his uncle, too, and his uncle’s fellow monks, if Kylo was being honest. Even Kylo’s brothers-in-arms had not cared much for him and his temper. God had neither sustained nor softened him; neither had brotherhood. He’d carried that chip on his shoulder for so long, it had come to feel like an ingrained part of his anatomy, his very being. Who else could he be other than what the world had made him? He hadn’t known any other way.

Rudderless, he’d returned to Illinois from the battlefield. Hopeless, he’d taken the first offer of home and belonging that had come his way. Despairing, he had done what he needed to stay in Snoke’s favor, in lieu of being able to do so for his long-since estranged family.

Nothing had meant anything to him for so long.

But ensuring that Rey reached Jakku safely… this was something pure, something good. He could do this one good thing before he settled into his acceptance of Snoke’s exile. The man would not come after him, of that he felt certain. He was not so valuable to Snoke as he’d once been. So he would go, he vowed, once he knew that she’d be all right. He’d find a place for himself in the wild, far away from anyone else.

A life of a hermit was what he deserved; and wasn’t it fitting? It was the life his parents had wanted for him. He was determined not complain. He would fight no longer against his fate.

But by God, did he wish she would speak to him. Or look at him.

Or even acknowledge him.

. . .

It’s not that there was nothing to hunt. There was fowl, and little squeaking creatures, and snakes. The prairies were overflowing with their own kinds of brush, some of which was no doubt edible.

But after thousands of miles and over a year of walking, complete and utter lassitude was sinking its claws into Rey. The mere act of walking, of putting one tattered, hole-ridden boot in front of the other each day; this was about all she could take.

For the first week after they passed through Texarkana, she kept to her routine. But by the time the world unfurled upon the prairie, she could feel her body giving up.

And maybe there was something else, too. Her head pounded from the moment she woke until she closed her eyes, without respite, no matter how much water she drank from the streams they passed. Her guts were all twisted, as if she’d eaten something spoiled. Cramps lanced at her. Regardless of how far she pushed herself—and it did feel like a straining, arduous push to cover these final miles—she still found herself restless at night, with twitchy legs and a racing mind.

During the day, she did not look back at him. At night, she obsessed over the memorized details of his face, his body. Her drawers grew wet, her quivering cunt felt empty and needy.

Glands that had laid quiet for months were beginning to swell and throb.

In truth, everything ached. Those just ached in a particular way.

And in the midst of all this physical upheaval, her hunts were half-hearted at best. Haphazard, a quick beat about the bush. When she could not find anything, she would lie down instead. Stare at the inside of her lean-to. Wait for dawn.

She did not want Kylo to see how afraid she was, how tired. So she hid her face in her arm when the urge to cry overpowered her, and employed the well-learned skill of crying quietly, discreetly.

None of it mattered. She was so close now, so close.

One morning, towards the end of the second week of their time walking through Texas, she found a tin of peaches by her feet when she awoke.

Kylo was situated in his tent, far enough off that shouting over to him would be an inconvenience. And though she watched him stir and break down his camp while she stabbed open the top and proceeded to devour the sweet, syrupy contents, he said nothing of the mysterious gift.

So neither did she.

. . .

He could smell her, the beginnings of heat on her.

As they passed into their third week of walking through Texas—a few days of woodlands here, then back to prairies, then plains, then more woods, and so on—he watched the weight fall off her, caught glimpses of how wild her eyes were getting, the dark shadows underneath telling a story all their own. And he decided an intervention of sorts was necessary.

That was when he began raiding the towns they were passing. They were few and far apart, there wasn’t always anything to find. But while Rey slept, he scavenged. He ate what he needed where he found it, and the rest, he brought back for her. It was what any good Alpha would do.

Offerings left at her feet for her to find in the morning. Canned food, mostly, fruit or meat or beans, or salted, pickled things that had not gone to rot. The general stores often still had bullets; he used them to hunt, after which he would cook the meat and leave little parcels of it by her camp.

There were other things in some of the bigger towns. They passed a mining settlement named Corellia that had a lady’s dress shop in its square, full of sensual things he wanted to see her wearing. Satin and lace slips and camisoles, pearls and jewels, fine dresses tailored by hand. There was a chance, however, that she might reject those on the grounds of their frivolity, and Kylo knew himself well enough to know that such a rejection would hurt him. She had already turned away his presence, his assistance.

Another blow to his ego might break him.

Thus, he stole few things of that nature, sticking to food for her mostly, of which it was obvious she was in dire need. That, she would not reject. Could not. She did not thank him or acknowledge his efforts, not that he'd expected her to, but at least she ate what he left for her, shoving the contents into her mouth with such vigor he sometimes worried she'd make herself sick.

In another life, he might've asked her to dance at a country ball, or bowed to her after a sermon on Sunday, then asked for her opinion on the cosmological mysteries of the universe. He might've passed her sweet notes in the schoolhouse as a gap-toothed, big-eared boy. Under supervision of a chaperone, he might've shared a sarsaparilla with her on a fine spring afternoon.

That was another life, another world, one that was gone. Here in this world, in which they both lived, she had watched him execute Alphas on a stage like the devil's own showman. She knew what he was. Whether he was what he was because the world had shaped him or because he'd been weak and allowed himself to become a monster did not matter to her. It hardly mattered to him, either.

He was a killer, he was a man easily manipulated—he saw that now—and she no doubt suspected him of a host of other sins, if her reference to his lies was any indication.

So.

Can by can, meal by meal, he did his best to keep his vow.

She would get to Jakku, she would be returned to her family as he could not be to his.

Then he would leave her be; leave her to her happy ending. He'd walk away from her, even if it killed him.

. . .

Jakku was situated in the valley of two low, rolling prairie hillocks. The surroundings were not the sere country he’d imagined when he’d located it on the map. In fact, when they approached the sign bearing its name—Jakku, population 100—he learned that it had been established near the banks of a shining spring, which glimmered and danced, even in the dull wintry daylight. As they drew close, he could see the farmland surrounding the town; it had long since gone wild, dotted with crumbling sod houses and falling down fence posts.

The town was abandoned. This was a fact Kylo discovered when they finally left the rails behind and ambled through its one and only street. He wondered if the sight of the empty, tumbledown buildings surprised Rey; if the absence of citizens alarmed her.

If they did, she gave no indication.

"You've seen me here safely," she murmured, dropping her knapsack on the porch of the saloon. Its windows gaped like the eyes of a forlorn jack-o'-lantern, so Kylo looked away, inspecting the other buildings.

“I know,” he said.

"You've done what you set out to do."

There was a careful blankness to her voice, an eerie calm in her words.

The saloon, a general store, a butcher’s shop, an apothecary, the train depot, a jail, a well. A dozen ramshackle houses, no more than hovels, really. In the distance, windmills and winter-deadened cotton fields. A dusty expanse of dirt that served as the road. A blustery wind blowing past it all, reeking of ozone and coming rain, pulling at him, urging him onwards, though there was nowhere else to go. They had reached their destination. _ This _was Jakku.

Rey was already moving away from him, headed towards the other end of town, where sat the only other notable landmark.

The church, and beside it, the cemetery.

“You can go home now, Kylo Ren,” she bid him, an enigmatic expression on her face, something between elation and despair. Then she turned, and walked on, and spoke no more.

_ I can’t_, he thought, as he watched her go.

. . .

When Rey saw the arch and the sign it held, the words spelled out in wrought iron—Jakku Cemetery—all the aches and pains of her journey fell away.

It was, she mused as her feet carried her forward, what flying must feel like, to a bird. Light of bone, empty of mind; the world falling away. Floating on a zephyr, drifting towards inevitability.

Within the rusted fence guarding the perimeter, there stood many listing tombstones, most huddled close together. Some were newer; the names carved into their faces were still legible. Some were older; they were harder or even impossible to read. Some were hewn in the traditional shape, like headboards for those who had gone to their eternal slumber. Some were crosses, some were angels. Some were splintered, rotting hunks of wood; there was no one left to maintain them, replace them.

Soon they would be as much a part of the earth as the people beneath them.

But Rey had sharp eyes and single minded determination—she had come so far, after all—and most importantly, she wanted nothing else but to lay her weary body down. So she pushed through the gate, ignoring its scream of protest. From stone to stone and cross to cross, she wandered, reading the names, deciphering with her fingertips those that had been eroded by wind and rain and dirt.

Sure enough, at the far right end of a row towards the back, she found a small marker, no taller than her knee.

The names upon its face told of a truth she had not let herself remember since the day Dosmit had given her the letter. She read them once, and then again, just to be sure.

It was them.

_ Dearly Departed. Percival and Igraine Johnson. 1911. _

She collapsed to her knees. The ground was hard. But what were bruised knees compared to all the other ways the world had wounded her? A pittance. Hardly even noticeable. Rey fell forward onto her belly and buried her face in the prickly weeds growing at the base of the tombstone. She breathed in wetly, and did not care a whit when her mouth filled with black prairie dirt.

She was home, at last.

With the ones who had been waiting so long.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://www.infoplease.com/primary-sources/poetry/christina-rossetti/christina-rossetti-they-desire-better-country)?
> 
> Let's talk [ye olde timey foodstuffs](https://blogs.ancestry.com/cm/whats-for-dinner-what-your-ancestors-ate-back-in-the-day/). 
> 
> Speaking of ye olde timey,[some Little Rock things](https://ualrexhibits.org/littlerock/view-all-with-captions/)!
> 
> The [St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Louis,_Iron_Mountain_and_Southern_Railway) is pretty interesting. 
> 
> More about [Jedha](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jedha) and [Lothal](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Lothal) and their real-life inspiration, [Biddle](http://www.arkansasrailroadhistory.com/Biddle/biddle.htm) and [Beebe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beebe_Railroad_Station). 😏 [Also, [Corellia](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Corellia).]
> 
> [Map](https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3701p.rr000620/?r=0.416,0.362,0.213,0.085,0) I used to chart Rey's journey through Arkansas.
> 
> Wildlife of [Arkansas](https://res.cloudinary.com/miles-extranet-dev/image/upload/v1528212893/ArkansasSP/migration_documents/33/Millwoodwildlifelane.pdf). More info here, specifically, [small mammals](http://trailsofarkansas.blogspot.com/2013/05/small-mammals-of-arkansas.html?m=1).
> 
> Looking back at all the links I copied into my Google doc, it turns out I actually did a ton of research on geography and climate for this chapter? Yet I probably still got things wrong. If I did, I hope you can forgive me. Some links: [Little Egypt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Illinois#Origin_of_%22Little_Egypt%22_name), [Little Rock](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Rock,_Arkansas), [Everyone who contributed their experiences and pictures on this thread, you are all heroes and I stan](https://twitter.com/voicedimplosive/status/1163085705238724608), [the Timberlands of Arkansas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_Timberlands), [Texarkana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texarkana), [regions of Texas](https://texasalmanac.com/topics/environment/physical-regions-texas), the [Piney Woods](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piney_Woods), and then [three](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_blackland_prairies) [different](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jon_Lohse/publication/313827690/figure/fig3/AS:463173707931649@1487440625168/1-Physiographic-regions-of-Texas.png) [sources](https://miro.medium.com/max/1400/0*CQhdje8USaW53cdX.jpg) on the regions of Texas because I have no chill.
> 
> Me, reading that this one strip of Texas has [Prairies and Lakes](https://wikitravel.org/en/Prairies_and_Lakes): yep sure sounds good let's do this.
> 
> Winter migration and hibernation habits of the [American bullfrog](https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Lithobates_catesbeianus/) and the [Great Blue Heron](https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Great_Blue_Heron/maps-range).
> 
> What is a [sarsaparilla](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarsaparilla_\(soft_drink\))? And have you ever drank one? And would you recommend it?
> 
> Some important name meanings: [Percival](https://www.behindthename.com/name/percival) and [Igraine](https://www.behindthename.com/name/igraine). I think we all know where Johnson comes from.
> 
> Now that this chapter is out there, I can mention one of my biggest influences [narrative-wise] for this story, which I didn't reference earlier because I didn't want to forecast this turn of events! [_Walk Two Moons_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walk_Two_Moons) is a fantastic book that I adored when I was a youngin, and I recommend to anyone and everyone.
> 
> Okay, that's it from me for this chapter. If you have a moment, I would sincerely love to hear your thoughts on the story so far. Otherwise, that's it! Thank you for reading! 💖


	13. I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Many, many thanks to Mae for these [gorgeous](https://twitter.com/MaeReylo/status/1182582417766285314) [moodboards](https://twitter.com/MaeReylo/status/1184037712757583872)! You are such a generous soul and these are just so perfect! 🥰

**“In the nightstand,” says Dosmit, squeezing Henrietta’s hand before releasing it and pointing to the drawer. “The letter. Take it out.”**

**Henrietta feels her brow furrow, a frown tugging at her lips. She pulls open the drawer to find a tattered bible, a glass-bead rosary, the nun’s Pist-o-liter, her knitting needles, and finally, tucked away underneath all of that, an envelope. The paper is wrinkled, the ink faded from age.**

**The handwriting is neat and simple. It is addressed: ** ** _To the Nuns and Monks of Saint Padmé’s Home for Foundling Omegas_****. There is a return address: Jakku, Texas.**

**“Go on,” Dosmit wheezes. Her eyes have regained that vivid light that seemed to imbue them in healthier, stronger days. She stares at Henrietta, unblinking. “Open it. Read the letter.”**

**“What is this?” demands Henrietta, fear sending a chill through her.**

**“See for yourself.”**

**She turns the envelope over, lifts the flap, and withdraws the letter. Unfolds it.**

** _To Whom it May Concern… _ **

**“Sister Dosmit, what is this?” she asks again, more insistently this time. Henrietta does not want to read this letter. Whatever its contents may be, they are not as important as the health of her dearest friend.**

**“I should’ve told you a long time ago,” says the nun.**

**Now her eyes rove away, staring at the open doorway and beyond it, out into the shadowed hall. No children run by, shrieking out their excitement over a game of tag; none are left.**

**There is only the wan silence of death.**

**“Told me what?”**

**“Just read. Read it for me—I want to hear the words from you. It’s the punishment I deserve.”**

**“Dosmit…”**

**Rarely does Henrietta use the nun’s name informally; decorum has always stood strong between them, in that regard. But now she is frightened, and in her heart, she knows that Dosmit does not have long left to live.**

**There is no time left for formality.**

**But Dosmit does not budge, so she clears her throat, blinking back the tears scalding her eyes. Looks down at the neatly written message. Begins to read aloud.**

**“To whom it may concern: My name is Igraine Johnson. I am writing to you today in reference to a newborn that was left in your care some years ago, in January of 1900—” here Henrietta’s voice breaks, and her hands begin to tremble, but she forces herself to continue, “—named Henrietta. It was with great shame and sorrow that my husband and I entrusted her to you, and the regret of having done so has followed us ever since. We wish to remedy that now—we wish to bring her home to us, where she belongs.”**

**She breaks off, overcome. There is no fighting the tears now; there is only confusion, only budding anger, only fear, oh, the fear, the terrible, terrible ** ** _fear_****.**

**“I should have given this to you when I received it—Lord, I don’t even remember how many years ago,” says Dosmit. “Is it dated?”**

**Henrietta scans the letter and finds a date in the upper righthand corner. “May of 1910.”**

**Nine years ago. Dosmit will not meet Henrietta’s eyes.**

**“What is this? My… my parents wrote to you?”**

**“The world had grown so dangerous for an Omega child,” she whispers. “They gave you up. Left you for dead.”**

**“They wanted me back!”**

**“But ** ** _why_ ** **, Henrietta?”**

**She has no answer but her tears.**

**Dosmit has also begun to cry. She reaches for Henrietta’s hand, but Henrietta wrenches it away and returns to the letter. “Here in Jakku, we have experienced a reversal of our fortunes,” she reads on. “We request that Henrietta be sent to us. There is a safe and loving home waiting for her here.”**

**“I’m sorry,” moans the nun.**

**“We wish ardently for her to reside with us as our daughter, as she should have always done. Please use the money enclosed to send her to us as soon as possible. Please tell her that her family is _wait-ing_,” finishes Henrietta, her voice breaking on that final word.**

**“I have done you wrong, and I know that. But… but…”**

**“But ** ** _what_****?”**

**Dosmit’s lips twist as she attempts to overcome her own tears so she might speak. “If they had really wanted you, why didn’t they come ** ** _back _ ** **for you? Come to London, come to Saint Padmé’s? What was I to do, put you a ship and never see you again? I ** ** _raised _ ** **you, from a babe to a woman. You were… you were… like my own… my… my…” she trails off, weeping too heavily to speak. Henrietta offers no assistance; at length, Dosmit corrals her emotions and presses on. “I replied to them, demanding answers, demanding they come here and let me look upon them with my own eyes.”**

**“And?”**

**“I heard nothing back.”**

**“They’ve been ** ** _waiting _ ** **for me.”**

**“My dear, I searched for them—”**

**“****_They’ve been waiting for me!_ ** **”**

**“They’re not—”**

**“Enough,” Henrietta bites out. She rises from her chair. “Enough! I ** ** _trusted _ ** **you. You were—you were like my—” But just as Dosmit cannot bring herself to say it, neither can Henrietta. She lets out a wet sob instead.**

**“I am… I am so ** ** _sorry _ ** **I waited,” warbles Dosmit. “I should’ve told you when I received it, when they were still—” **

** _Alive_ ** ** is the next word. She knows it. She can almost hear its echo in its absence; it goes unspoken. Even now, in her hour of confession, Dosmit shies away from the finality of her betrayal. **

**“You were so young—”**

**Henrietta turns and storms from the room, hands clamped over her ears. But she hears the weak calls of the nun anyway, hears the words that will haunt her, will be her tormentors and her jailors and her liberators, the words from which she can never escape, the words that will drive her onwards, mercilessly, ceaselessly.**

**“They’re gone, Henrietta. Forgive me, please. Please, please, _please_. They’re gone.”**

* * *

Rey awoke to discover she had been tucked into a large, soft bed in a very nice bedroom.

A noise had roused her from blurry, half-remembered dreams. It took a second to identify it, but with a flurry of sound and movement, in through the open doorway bustled Kylo Ren, stripped of his fur cloak and shirt and buckskin vest, wearing only his undershirt and suspenders and trousers, his heavy boots thudding against the puncheon floorboards with every step, a metal pail in each hand.

The muscles in his arms bunched and corded with the weight of his cargo, and Rey knew then what it was to _ want_, as she had not wanted in a long time. She swatted away her desire like a tiresome insect.

When his eyes landed on her, he startled slightly; she wondered how long she’d been out, to evoke such a response. But he only nodded, setting the pails on the floor beside a large wooden tub basin. Carefully, he tipped the contents—steaming hot water—into the oblong tub. Pails in hand, he spun on his heel and disappeared through the doorway.

On his next pass, he simply said, “It’s hot,” with a jerk of his chin towards the water he was pouring.

“I can see that,” she retorted dryly.

His lips twitched and he vanished once more. To fetch the next round of water, she supposed.

She did not get up. She did not even move. She told herself that if this was part of her destiny, and her death—a hot bath in an only _ slightly _ dusty bedroom, filled with fine, if antiquated wooden furniture—then so be it.

Her eyes closed of their own volition.

Her dreams were slippery. Nothing but shades and shadows, nothing but silvery-blue phantasms at the edges of her vision. They disappeared whenever she turned her head to look upon them.

. . . 

When next her eyes opened, the door was shut and the tub was full. Steam rose from the water within. From somewhere else in the house came the clamor of metal banging against metal.

Rey threw back the covers. She still had on her threadbare men’s drawers and undershirt and the woolen socks she’d stolen in Chandrila, but her shirt and trousers and belt and boots were all gone. Thankfully, the air was not cold, though the room’s only window did not catch the afternoon sunlight and the interior was dimly lit. The wooden floorboards were rough under her feet, unsanded and unevenly hewn together. The dark soil showed through between their considerable gaps.

She passed over to the window, and found her clothes atop the dresser, neatly folded. His coat, too. Beside them was a silken slip of fabric. Rey pulled it up by the two strips of lace that served as straps, admiring the soft, mother-of-pearl fabric and lace trim. 

A chemise. A beautiful, expensive one meant for a refined lady. Where had he found this?

What was she supposed to do with it?

There was a flannel dressing gown underneath it, which helped to assuage Rey’s suspicions, somewhat, as to his intentions. She sighed and dropped the chemise back onto the dresser.

Out through the warped glass she could see the Texan prairie, swaying grass and the odd velvet mesquite tree, all rolling away from Jakku, on and on towards a dull grey sky. It was an impressive, sweeping view, but she felt hollowed out and uninspired by it. What did it mean for her? What _ could _it? What meant anything, anymore?

Somewhere, inside the house or out, a cricked chirped. Otherwise, it was peaceful, pastoral, save for the racket Kylo was making in what she presumed to be the kitchen.

There was something itching at her, an awareness of a problem she was not ready to confront. Had not thought she would need to confront. Throughout the last week or so, she’d had all the symptoms. The headaches, the cramping, the stiffness in her lower back… 

The heat between her legs and under her belly…

Rey groaned and let her head tip forward, resting her forehead against the window. Though the glass pane’s surface was cool, there was little solace to be found.

She wanted to yell at somebody or something. She wanted to rip the world apart, limb from limb, for ever delivering her into its midst. Raging at Kylo might prove dangerous but if he pushed her, she did not know if she could control her temper, in this state.

Her heat was coming.

Everything ached. With another groan, she stumbled towards the tub. It took her several minutes to get in: slowly, jerkily, she pulled the undershirt over her head, shimmied out of her drawers, which had grown damp in her sleep from heat-induced emissions. Her body did not respond readily to her commands as she stripped; it felt as though she was trying to order about an automaton by playing whisper down the lane.

At the sight of her own naked figure, she let out a despairing sob.

Pale, where clothes had sheltered it from the sun. Unlike her neck and her arms and her face.

And gaunt. Hip bones like jutting promontories, rib cage like a ladder, any curves she’d had before the catastrophe eaten away by years of labor and travel and hunger.

Over two thousand miles she had come, driven onwards by a lie so tremendous she’d had to tell it to herself herself again and again until she had believed it, until she had lived and breathed it. Until it was all that was left. From London to Liverpool she had walked, and on the docks she had lurked until she’d bartered passage with Han, and over the Atlantic she had sailed, and across half of a bloody continent she had trekked. She’d driven her body, her mind, to the brink of collapse.

For what?

To die on her parents’ grave?

Maybe.

Maybe that’s all there was to it.

Maybe there wasn’t supposed to be anything after she laid herself down with her family. That had been the end of the story, in her mind.

The soles of her feet, she observed, were hardened tree roots, her limbs ropy, stringy branches, her skin bark-dry, calloused in places from months—over a year, she corrected herself—of abrasion from her roughspun clothes and her pack and her boots.

She had never planned for what came after. How she would go on, make a home, live a life. Everything exhausted her. Eating, sleeping, breathing. It was all a chore.

There were two truths Rey was forced to confront as she lowered herself into the creaking wooden tub, hissing at the heat before relaxing into the burn, something cracking in her chest as her muscles unwound slightly for the first time since forever.

The first was this: Kylo was not a good man, but neither was he a monster. That had been a too-hasty, unfair assessment. A bar of lumpy soap and a soft washcloth sat on a short three-legged stool next to the tub. The aroma of cooking food crept in under the closed door, promising a wholesome meal in her near future.

He was not a man absent feeling, absent empathy.

Without asking for gratitude or plaudits, he had supplemented her provisions throughout their journey into Texas. He had not once threatened her, physically or with the specter of Snoke. He had never _ once _mentioned their so-called compatible biology.

She felt she knew him less than ever.

The other truth was this: she was out of hope, out of strength. Everything she’d had, she’d poured into this mission. It had been the one thing to sustain her from the moment Dosmit died. Now she was here but Dosmit was not, never would be, and there was no family waiting for her. 

Never had been.

The lies tumbled down upon her, a landslide briefly held at bay by her own stubborn self-delusion. They buried her now, and Rey welcomed the burial.

It didn’t matter that Kylo was just in the next room over, that he had prepared this bath for her, that he had brought her in from the cemetery, that he was cooking for her. Monster or martyr, Kylo Ren would never fill the gaping hole in her life left by Sister Dosmit Ræh. Left by the lies she had told herself.

To live on, she understood, would mean accepting that she was utterly alone.

And the choice to be so had been hers.

. . .

When she emerged from the bedroom, scrubbed raw and pink and smelling better than she ever had in her entire life, she was unashamedly dressed in only the chemise. Rey walked into a homey scene; the kitchen table looked to be on the brink of collapse under the weight of a great feast.

Kylo turned at the sound of the door opening. The look he gave her was appraising and unflinching. Her hair dangled in wet tendrils down to her breasts, dripping onto the pale, pearlescent silk, no doubt providing him with quite the view. Rey followed his gaze down, nearly crossing her arms at the sight of her nipples pressing against the semi-sheer fabric, the dark hair between her legs and under her arms, starkly visible. She fought back the impulse. Let him look. It wasn’t as if he would be permitted to touch her, she’d made that abundantly clear. 

And he _did _drink her in, greedily, from scalp to soles, lingering on the places of which she’d been most self-conscious. When he saw how calloused and blistered her feet were, something about the set of his mouth softened.

His gaze shot back up, meeting her hard stare. Then he blinked at her, moonish, as if he were no more than a green boy who’d been caught with his hand in the candy jar.

With a sharp swallow, he whirled back to the stove, hiding his face. “You need to eat,” he said. 

The smell of frying sausages wafted towards her, as though on cue. Rey could not remember the last time she’d eaten sausages. Surely, with the rationing during her final years at Saint Padmé’s, it had been years.

She sat down at the table on one of the three-legged stools and stole a hot biscuit from a gingham-covered basket.

It was an embarrassing surfeit of food, nearly every inch of tabletop crowded with plates and bowls and baskets, all teeming.

“Where’d all this come from?”

What emanated from her mouth was a husky croak; her true voice had been exhausted along with everything else. It sounded as though the tortured winds out on the prairie had asked the question.

Like she was a living, breathing ghost. A ghost girl, returned to her ghost town. How fitting. She laughed abruptly at the thought, which drew a wary glance from him, though he made no comment.

“Looks like everyone left town in a hurry,” he answered. “General store is well supplied.”

The sausages, it seemed, were the final touch, because once he swung the pan around and speared each with his fork, depositing them onto a plate that already bore a mound of fried potatoes, he returned the pan to the stove and took a seat across from her.

He gestured to the food. “Please.”

Rey did not have the energy to argue.

“I understand now,” he said quietly, as she began filling up her plate. “Why you came here. Who you are.”

“Doubt that.”

“You’ve given up.”

She froze.

“Haven’t you?” he pressed.

A shiver ripped down her spine; she did not look up from her plate.

“You aren’t going to shoot me for saying so, are you?”

“You followed me to the cemetery,” she deduced, monotone. “Though I told you not to.”

He hummed an affirmative.

The plate of food she was preparing for herself was the most interesting sight in the world. Or at least, she could be credited with believably acting like it was. She did not avert her gaze from it.

“Rey. What did you think would happen, when you got here?”

“I didn’t!” She snatched up another biscuit and tore into it. Disregarding every etiquette lesson she’d ever had, she snarled, mouth full, “I didn’t think about that.”

“I’d given up too,” he confessed, in a whisper. It felt as though there was a second half to that sentence. 

_ Before what_? she wanted to ask. But she shoveled potatoes into her mouth instead and let the unspoken words dangle.

She could hear them anyway. 

_ Before you_.

Rey did not want to be his hope. She did not want to be anything to anyone.

He stood and disappeared once more, this time into a room at the front of the house, then returned with a book in his hand, which he passed over to her. Anakin’s work.

“Thank you.” He wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t frowning either. He just looked… earnest. “I’m glad I read that. There were… It was illuminating.”

“Hm.”

A few minutes passed with only the sounds of her eating before he tried again. “Food all right?”

She wondered at the phrasing of that, if he was asking about the things he’d left for her during their travels, meat and tins and little scraps of whatever he could find, or about that on the table between them.

“Fine,” she muttered, and piled four pancakes onto her plate, along with half the sausages.

Now _ he _ frowned at _ her_. “Go slow or you’ll make yourself sick.”

“Who cares?”

“_I _care.”

She scoffed at him.

“My… Leia always told me that my grandfather doomed us all,” he said casually, as if he was remarking upon the weather. “That he’d damned us by publishing that study.” He sneered, but it seemed halfhearted. “The Discovery. But in his book…” The sneer faded away. “He’d hoped that his work would help the world understand. I see that now. I see his hope.”

He shook his head, working his jaw, apparently dissatisfied with the limits of his own eloquence.

“Not just hope,” he amended. “His intention—to make life better for folks.”

Rey swallowed her mouthful of pancake with difficulty, throat tight. “He was a good man and a brilliant mind.”

A nod. “But he was wrong, wasn’t he?”

“No!” she barked, then faltered. “Wh—what do you mean?”

“About biology. It does have _ some _control over us,” he said.

Was that a knowing edge to his voice? Was he insinuating her heat, that he could he smell her? Did he know that it was her own concupiscence that had led her to forego the thick robe and expose herself to him in just this slip of silk, because she wanted to see that flare of his nostrils, that widening of his eyes?

Rey curled in on herself, ashamed, now, of her attempts to tease him.

What had inspired her to do that?

_ Madness_, she mused to herself. _ I have finally gone mad. _

She shot a murderous look first at his empty plate, then at him. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

“‘Course,” he answered, and tucked into his own meal.

They ate in silence after that.

. . .

When Rey had eaten so much she thought she might pop, she dropped her spoon onto her plate with a clatter and sank back into her chair, sighing. It was as much a compliment to his cooking as she felt in her power to give.

Kylo’s raised eyebrow told her he appreciated it, all the same.

He took his last bite, then leaned over, retrieving something that had been tucked away next to one of the table legs.

A bottle of whiskey.

He stacked a few of the empty plates to make room for it on the table. Rey eyed it with suspicion.

There had been a rule against drinking in Saint Padmé’s. Which is not to say it hadn’t happened; just that it had been clandestine, best done in dark closets long after the nuns had gone to bed. And she’d drank with the sailors and Han a few times. They’d been the ones to gift her the flask of rye.

Kylo was watching her; she could feel his eyes boring into her.

“Might help with your heat,” he said gently.

Alarmed, Rey sat up, ramrod straight.

“I can smell it on you,” he explained. “There’s no controlling _ that_.”

“Don’t—don’t—”

He had not given her a reason to fear him in a long time, but at that moment, she did anyway. Feared what he might do next, what he might say. What liberties he might take, might think himself entitled to, as a recompense for his kindness.

He held his hands up, palms towards her. “I’m not—”

“Get _ out_,” she growled. When he didn’t move, she repeated the demand. “Get out, get out, get out!”

“Will you listen to me? I know… I know what I am, too.”

Rey shot to her feet. “Get _ out_!”

He shook his head, but pushed his stool back and stood. “I’m asking you to let me help you, Rey. I’m sure you’ve seen horrors. You’ve been alone. Lonely. You don’t have to be.”

“Get out!” she shrieked.

“Live in this world with me,” he pleaded.

The tears rushed up on her, clogging her throat, her nose, blurring her vision. She reeled back from the table, nearly toppling over her chair. “Don’t—”

“Easy, easy.” He raised his hands to her in surrender, just like he always did. When he took a step around the table towards her, a wild sob erupted from her chest, and he quickly reversed, backing away towards the door. “I’ll go,” he said, placating, “I’ll go. But,” he paused, and that old tic resurfaced—chewing on his words, a muscle in his jaw ticking—then, after what felt to be an eternity, clearly resolving to have out with it: “I’ll be nearby.”

Rey turned from him, a last-ditch effort to hide the emotion he’d already seen. Hot shame poured itself down her throat, into her gut, where it cooled like a leaden stone.

“If you need me,” he added, as he gingerly closed the door behind himself.

The words resonated with certainty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land)?
> 
> Here's a fun [blog post](http://myoldhistorichouse.blogspot.com/2011/11/washing-up.html) on washbowls and pitchers. I don't really remember anymore why it was so important to me that this detail be as accurate as possible but, well, here we are.
> 
> [Turn of the century undies](http://thedreamstress.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Gossard-Corsets.jpg). I feel like I'm probably taking some liberties by making Rey's slinky and form-fitting and silk instead of these under-corset garments; it's really more of a slip, something like [this](http://mrsdepew.com/_Media/6260-art-work_med.jpeg) and probably would've come along later, but... meh. Let's say Kylo just happened upon a garment shop that was like, ahead of its time. Y'know, pre-apocalypse. Avant garde fashion in rural Texas. Like you do.
> 
> What's a [velvet mesquite](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosopis_velutina)? [Besides the name of my new band.]
> 
> This blog post is more about [housing on the frontiers in the 1800's](http://seducedbyhistory.blogspot.com/2009/05/housing-in-1800s-america.html) but at the same time I think there would probably be a lot of rural areas still living this way, especially mid/post-Catastrophe. Also, here is a very colorful [site](https://www.campsilos.org/mod2/teachers/r3_part5.shtml) that reminds me of an old GeoCities format but at the same time it had some fascinating insight into pioneer homemaking so I'm cool with it.
> 
> I think this maybe should've gone in the last chapter but oh well. What's a [sod house](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sod_house)?
> 
> Okay, short chapter this time, not too many notes. I hope this answered some of the questions some readers had at the end of the last chapter, though. And I promise a real _whammy_ of a chapter coming your way this weekend. Thank you for reading! 💙


	14. you fit into me like a hook into an eye a fish hook an open eye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, please take a second to check out this _fantastic_ [moodboard](https://twitter.com/curiousniffin/status/1184670292922241024) that curiosniffin made, as well as this lovely handwritten [version](https://twitter.com/theskiddlyboop/status/1184650443013738497) of a very meaningful line of Kylo's from the last chapter from the skiddlyboop. They are both incredible, thank you again guys! 🥰

**Dosmit Ræh passes away on an unusually fresh, clear morning in May of 1919. **

**She dies alone. The mindless, babbling mania of The Lover’s Death comes for her, but Henrietta cannot find her way back into Dosmit’s room. Her vision is blighted by rage, her heart tangled up in sorrow. She sits in the common room, on the old davenport she and Dosmit used to occupy nightly, reading or knitting or playing cards, and she stares at nothing.**

**Every cell in her body screams at her to go to Dosmit, to forgive her her transgressions, to tell the woman who raised her that she loves her. To give her peace before the end. But she is stubborn and self-righteous; always has been. The offense feels unforgivable and her pride is in tatters, but it’s all she has left. Thus, lost in her bewildered grief, she stays rooted where she is.**

**The moment Mother Maz tells her Dosmit is gone, regret begins to devour her from the inside out. **

**Why did she not go to her? **

**How could she let Dosmit die alone?**

**But it is too late.**

**So Henrietta buries the body herself.**

**It is not that there is no one else to do it; there are still those who can and would help. But she refuses their offers, except to let them clean and dress the nun and help Henrietta place the body in the casket.**

**She scavenges scraps of wood from a local abandoned junkyard to build that casket. It is a crude thing; Henrietta has never built a casket before, though she has seen many die and helped to bury most of them. The work is important. It keeps her hands and her mind busy, helps her to forget the sound of Dosmit’s pained moans that rang out in the empty halls, her feverish mewling cries for something, anything to fill the aching emptiness.**

**There is no cure.**

**Though as a society it had embarrassed them all deeply, in the beginning, when the Lover’s Death had first swept across London, many tried to fight it with copulation. With mating. It had not sufficed; the infected could not be satiated. They all died in their beds, locked together, consumed by their fathomless need. Some were even buried that way, though the double caskets kept things discreet and brushed a veneer of romance over the ordeal that must have been their final hours.**

**Dosmit does not die that way. She dies in her bed, yes, but in a fevered sleep brought on by the laudanum Mother Maz keeps hidden away in a locked chest somewhere for occasions such as this.**

**She dies with a distraught Henrietta staring at nothing a few floors below, unable to forgive the one person who matters most in the world to her and equally unable to leave her behind entirely.**

**It takes Henrietta the better part of the day to dig a hole in the old church cemetery. The earth is heavy with recent rains, and having foregone many meals in recent weeks so that she might feed Dosmit well, Henrietta’s arms are not so strong as they once were. She pauses often, wheezing, tired, drenched with perspiration, her entire body trembling with exertion, nausea twisting her empty stomach.**

**Eventually she finishes. Under a buttery full moon, she drags the casket out from the home, down the street, ignoring the stares of those who are left to watch. She drags it through the cemetery’s looming gates. She drags it to the hole she has dug.**

**Taking great care, she lowers the casket down into the hole. Then herself after.**

**She stretches out atop it.**

**There she stays until the moon sinks and the stars twinkle like tossed diamonds upon a swath of black velvet. As the hours pass, waves of sorrow wash over her. She does not fight them. They flow, she cries. They ebb, she watches the stars. At length, the sky begins to lighten, the stars winking out one by one. It is a brilliant sunrise, though she sees only a small window of the crimson clouds from Dosmit’s final resting place.**

**Nobody comes for her.**

**Henrietta suspects they understand; they want to let her grieve in peace. Besides, they cannot spare the time. Inside the walls of Saint Padmé’s, there are still so many dying and so few left to care for them.**

**After the sun has blazed a path from one side of the pit’s walls to the other, it sets the clouds aflame in its passing just as it did in its arrival. Then and only then does she climb out of the hole.**

**Bathed in the ruby glow of the sinking sun, Henrietta buries her best friend, her mother, her sister. The woman who raised her, the woman who lied to her. As the last of the dirt is tossed upon the grave, she recalls the contents of the letter that was kept from her, and a promise made when she was young and naive.**

** _“I'll go by Rey, so nobody knows who _ ** **I** ** _ am,”_ ** ** she’d vowed. ** ** _“And I'll shout orders at everybody just like an Alpha does. And I'll wear trousers and I'll smoke cigarettes just like a boy.”_ **

**Rey begins to plan.**

* * *

She was going to lose herself to this heat, she could feel it. Slick pooling, need throbbing its way up from her cunt, licking flames at her lungs, making each breath labored—it was more intense than the heats that had come before. Was it because an Alpha had been hanging around, triggering something within her? She couldn’t be sure; Anakin’s book may have mentioned something about the presence of Alphas and Omegas influencing one another’s heats and ruts, but she was too fevered to recall any of that now and too distracted to check.

For several hours or several minutes, she had sat at the kitchen table, staring at the closed door, thinking and thinking and thinking. Now, on tiptoe, as though she were hiding some illicit deed, she made her way back to the bedroom, leaving the mess on the table and closing the door behind her. She laid down in the bed and hitched the chemise up to her waist.

Her thighs were damp; her folds were sopping wet. She wanted to scream or cry or both. Instead, she touched herself, gently at first, just exploring, just testing—it had been months since she’d done this, since she’d had the energy to even _ think _ of doing this—and then, when her ardor rose, she ground down on that small pearl of flesh at the top of her cunt with the heel of her hand, like she was kneading a ball of dough. Efficient, ruthless, _ quick_.

She came with the tiniest whimper, her entire body tensing on a spike of pleasure then going limp, but the relief was short-lived. In the aftermath of her orgasm, the sheets felt gritty and rough, sandpaper against her heated skin, while paradoxically, the mattress felt too soft, too yielding. 

And soon enough, the need returned.

She rose from the bed and took to pacing the room. When that did not relieve her jitters, she expanded her route, throwing open the bedroom door and exploring the rest of the house.

There was not much to explore. The small kitchen with its woodfire range stove and washbasin and wooden stools and tableful of dirty dishes; one window looking out at a neglected garden and a commode situated behind the house. An even smaller parlor at the front of the house, little more than three wooden chairs around a spindly table, on which sat a smoke-stained oil lamp.

One circuit, two, a third. Her mind was moving even faster than her feet, racing out ahead of her. After eyeing the bottle of whiskey on the table for a moment, Rey let out a soft ‘ugh’ and uncorked it, then threw back a swallow.

It burned, how it burned. But her skin burned more, and it felt good to match the prickling fire running along her nerves with the one now heating her from within. Felt like balance, oddly enough.

Had Kylo known that, when he’d offered her the bottle?

Damn him, damn his knowledge, damn his offers, damn this town and this house and the whole world or whatever was left of it.

Damn, damn, damn.

There was no satisfaction to be found, no matter how many laps she made through the three rooms. There were splinters in the hard soles of her feet by the time she came to a stop in the bedroom, but she could barely feel them.

Could barely feel anything but the tightening reins of her need.

Begrudgingly, she took off the chemise—it already reeked of her scent, her heat, and it was soft, nice against her sensitive flesh, but it did not offer much in the way of protection from the elements—and then she donned her filthy men’s garments once more.

Through the parlor she passed, mouth set in a grim line. She swung open the front door.

Out she went. To what end, she did not know.

. . .

The day was bright in a way that had been obscured by the small, sparse windows of the house. She stepped out onto the porch and took a minute to let her eyes adjust, lifting a hand to shield them, before descending the three steps to the dirt road.

So this was Jakku.

She’d taken brief stock of its landmarks earlier, as she’d made her way to the cemetery, but now she really _ studied _the place.

Kylo was right. Nothing appeared to have been locked up, nor had the town been raided—at least not that she could see. It had just been… left behind.

Forgotten.

The only other living thing, besides the overgrown grasses that hemmed in the buildings and a lizard skittering past Rey’s boots, was positioned across the road, on the porch of the saloon, leaning against one of the column supports for the tin roof above.

Watching her from under the brim of his pork pie hat.

“Where are my things?” she called to him, as though she was challenging him to a duel.

He swung his head to the side, slightly. Rey followed the motion over and down and found that her pack was exactly where she left it, lying on the floorboards of the porch.

“…Oh.”

She stomped over and snatched it up; he stayed exactly where he was, perhaps in an effort to play possum. So still was he standing that Rey could not be certain he was even drawing breath.

The day was hot, close, the sky vast and grey as ever. It must have been well on toward January by now though she had no exact conception of the date; still, surely it remained the dead of winter. Perhaps Texas did not routinely acknowledge the changing of the seasons. At least, not like Canada had.

“Well water is good,” he told her, hushed, with a jerk of his chin towards the cylindrical stone structure at the far end of town, opposite the church and cemetery. “You can drink from it. If you’re thirsty.”

“Why’d you choose that house for me?” she asked, ignoring his advice.

“Spring water’s sweet, too,” he continued. “Mucky, though. You’ll have to filter it.”

“Answer my question!”

He sighed, toeing at the floorboards, and did not meet her eyes. Stubbornly, Rey let the question linger in the dry air. Did the answer even matter to her? No. She didn’t care, not really. It was just a provocation; she wanted to poke at the bear.

She left her motivations for that desire unexamined. They were safer that way.

“Looked like a nice place,” he finally replied. “The kind of home an Igraine and Percival would make.”

If the answer didn’t matter, why did it hurt so much to hear?

Now it was Rey who turned from him, unable to speak. She looked at the small one-story house from which she’d emerged, really _ looked _at it. The home itself was certainly ramshackle, timber-hewn, with sun-bleached silver-brown shingles and a shining wooden roof. There were depressingly few windows in the walls but they were in good shape at least, unshattered and framed by opened shutters that appeared to have once been a bright, cheery yellow.

The front door had once been cheerful too, a royal blue, or so she imagined, though now the paint was all a faded, dingy grey, like butter gone rancid.

It could be nice again, though. With some effort.

Her inspection moved to the plot gone to seed behind the house; it would not take much, she could see, to restore it to a proper garden. The soil was good here, black and velvety and growing all manner of wild things out on the prairies.

And he was right, it _ did _look like the kind of home a nice couple would make. Rey let her eyes unfocus and her vision blur, and envisioned—just for a second—a kindly looking middle-aged man lazing in the old rocking chair on the porch, his face lighting up when a tall, stout woman in a faded gingham dress passed through the brightly painted door and joined him, carrying cups of coffee for him and her.

Her hair would be grey, white showing at the temples. He’d have a shining bald patch on the back of his head. They would be strong, hardy folks, in simple clothes, with a softness about their faces and torsos that came from wisdom and age and relaxing into the fruits of their labors.

They would laugh softly to each other as they chatted over their coffee.

“Rey,” said Kylo, interrupting the fantasy, pulling her back to that washed out street, the blazing sun beating down from directly overhead, and the sad, unloved town that was sinking into desolation.

She swallowed.

“I apologize for the offense I caused earlier.”

There was sincere contrition in his voice. Turning back to him, she found his expression to be hangdog. Morose. He looked like he’d spent the hours since she kicked him out ruminating and regretting.

“I only meant…”

“I know what you meant,” she cut in.

“You don’t have to be alone,” he finished anyway.

_ I’ve always been alone, _ thought Rey. _ Even when I was packed in like a sardine with all the other children at Saint Padmé’s—in my heart, I was alone. _

_ Except for Dosmit. _

“Are you afraid, Kylo?” she needled, feeling just as hollow as before.

He tilted his head, brows furrowing.

Rey clarified: “Of loneliness. Does it frighten you?”

For a long time, he did not answer, but Rey was nothing if not patient, so she waited, cataloging the emotions drifting across his features. Each one strangely fascinating, strangely familiar, and strangely precious.

“Not mine,” he answered, on a heavy sigh.

“Then whose?” 

His jaw went tight, lips pursed. A muscle under his right eye twitched. “Yours,” he said.

That hit her in a way she was not prepared for, could _ never _ have prepared for, and she found she had no quick or witty retort. Not with the wounded, hungry look he was giving her, not with the weight of that one word finding a home in her chest.

Whatever the thing was that had been frenzied and restless within her—now it laid itself down and went quiet, as if commanded by that word.

Unable to speak, Rey reeled away from him and back into the house.

. . .

_ Would it be so wrong? _

This is what Rey pondered, sequestered away from his prying eyes. She stared down at the dirty dishes, coated with congealed fat and cold food. They would draw the flies soon if she didn’t clean up. But they were ignored for the time being in favor of a return to the bedroom. Rey crawled into the bed, curled up in the fetal position, wrapped her arms around her knees, and rocked herself.

Her thoughts roved on, ceaselessly: she would not have to do this alone. Just one single heat in a lifetime full of them, she could allow someone to help blunt the razor's edge of her need.

Just this once.

He was not a good man, but he was not entirely a bad one either. He had sold himself lies to get along, to make things easier, to find a place in the world that had been given to them.

Rey could relate.

And besides, it would be presented to him as a transaction. He had looked out for her, helped her. She could give him this heat, take him into herself, let him knot her. A thank you to him, a kindness returned, and an indulgence for herself, all in one.

The terms would be negotiated beforehand, she decided. It would be hard and fast; she was no untouched maiden. She did not need soft words or coaxing. There would be no kissing beforehand and no cuddling after. And absolutely no biting.

Just the scratching of an itch, the salve on a wound, the slaking of thirst.

He was the one who’d brought up biology, after all.

That’s all this would be: the meeting of a biological urge.

. . .

In the bedroom, she put the chemise back on. Then she changed back into her men's garments. Then she changed back again, grumbling at her own indecisiveness.

A compromise: she pulled his shaggy bearskin coat on over the silk, feeling somehow both soft and safe at the same time.

From her pack, she withdrew the old and no doubt worthless tobacco, then the papers. Finally, a jar containing dried herbs she had carried with her as a failsafe, never _ really _ intended for use: milk thistle. With nimble fingers she rolled herself a cigarette as she padded into the kitchen. She set the thistle in a pot of water on the stove, stoked the fire within, and waited.

When it was boiling, she carefully poured the brew into a cup, then sipped at it until it was cool enough to drain in one swallow.

That taken care of, she went back to the stove and lit the cigarette in its embers, inhaling deeply and releasing the smoke into the stagnant kitchen air. 

Now she was ready, or ready enough.

Back onto the porch she ventured.

. . .

“Ky-looo!” she hollered, using all the air in her lungs to really belt out his name.

While she waited, she studied the way the glossy fabric hugged her thin form, plucking at the lace lying against her sternum. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, thoughts still churning away.

_ Why? _ she mused to herself. _ Why bother with the pretense of any clothes at all, when there isn’t anyone around to be modest for? _

Why not just stroll down the street in the altogether, a cow bell clanging from her neck to beckon him to her?

Her cheeks flamed at the thought. She took another drag on the cigarette, though it barely tasted of anything. Oh, well. The act itself was still soothing; it was something to do with her restless hands. 

She hadn’t bothered to pin up her now-dried hair. When a sly wind rushed past her, it tickled against the bare skin on her neck, as did the lacy hem of the chemise on her calves. The coat was far too heavy, far too warm for how sweltering the day had become. Sweat was already beginning to bead under her small breasts, along the curve of her back.

Every sensation, every smell and every color, felt hyperreal. Too bright, too loud; skin too sensitive, and a heart beating too fast.

“Here!” bellowed a deep voice.

A moment later, Kylo rounded the porch at a dead run. He skidded to a halt in front of the porch, then tilted his head back to gawk at her. He was panting slightly, winded, as though he’d come running from afar.

Rey peered down at him. His burly bare arms were pink from the sun and they gleamed with perspiration, as did his face. Idly, she wondered if he'd been laboring at something. His scar, she observed, was well-healed now. How long had that been true? Days? Weeks? Had she simply not noticed, too lost in her own world, her own pain? 

She took a shaky drag from the cigarette then blew the smoke down at him, doing her best to maintain her imperious demeanor. To feign indifference to his woodsy, homey, alphic scent, his steady presence, his big solid body and his handsome face.

“I accept your offer.”

“You do?” he huffed, at once. She didn’t care for his arch tone.

His eyes raked over her; her breasts pressed against the silk, the flush creeping down her chest, her bare feet. The coat that swallowed up most of her body—his coat—and the cigarette dangling between her lips.

Then he dropped his voice to a low murmur. “Ah. You _ do_.”

Rey wanted to be impervious, but she shivered, nipples tightening, a fresh rush of slick seeping down her inner thigh. “There are conditions.”

He leaned a knee on the porch. “Alright.”

“You’ll have to agree to them.”

“I will.”

“You haven’t heard them yet!” she protested.

“Rey,” he said, clearly fighting back a smile, “I’ll agree to them.”

“Well.”

Fidgeting, unsure what to do with her hands, unsure where to look, she smoothed the front of the chemise, then gave a half-turn towards the house before shifting back towards Kylo. He watched it all without comment.

She offered him the cigarette; he reached up and took it with a grateful nod. He made a moue of discontent as he puffed on the thing, probably the same face Rey had made. But when his eyes flicked back to hers, they were warm and amused and tender. Her body went molten, just from being regarded in such a manner.

Being _ appreciated_.

The terrible, the miraculous.

“You might as well come inside then,” she said.

. . .

“You may knot me,” she began once they were in the bedroom, taking enjoyment in how his eyes bulged at her frankness, “But you may not bite me and I… I don’t want softness. No cuddling, no sweet nothings.”

He exhaled the smoke through his nostrils, one brow quirked. It took him a full minute to mull over those words and she thought he might protest, but finally, he nodded.

“No kisses.”

That, she could tell, he took exception to. His face fell slightly; he opened his mouth, looking ready to protest. Rey softened.

“Fine—kisses will be negotiated on a kiss by kiss basis.”

“You ever been kissed before, Rey?”

“I have.”

“Not by _ me_.”

Oh, the ego. She should’ve known that would come out. He was an Alpha, after all, wasn’t he?

“I agree to no biting,” he conceded, stubbing out the cigarette in the washbowl on the nightstand. His hat, he removed and perched atop the pitcher. For herself, she carelessly tossed his coat towards a dark corner of the room. He watched it go, then turned his attention back to her.

Though she noticed he had not agreed to the rest, she did not want to dawdle further. “Right. Good.” She fiddled with a strap. “Do you want to take this off?”

“What do _ you _want, Rey?”

“I want relief,” she replied at once, with complete honesty. “I want to feel good, for a change.”

He stepped closer, towering over her. His whole mien had shifted in an instant; now he stared down at her, breathing heavily, with such seriousness that she felt the sudden urge to crack a joke.

But she could not think of anything funny to say.

“That’s what I want, too,” he said.

His big hands were warm, when he finally put them on her. Just a light touch, cupping her waist in his palms, tugging her closer, until she was obliged to place her bare feet upon his boots. Then he moved one hand to the base of her skull and pulled her head towards the scarred side of his neck, as though giving her permission to do what she was aching to do, which was bury her nose there, against the gland, and inhale.

So she did.

His arms rose up to hold her tight against him.

Already, he had broken one of her rules. This was… it was an embrace. There was no getting around it. Affectionate, full of emotion. He was _ holding _her, and very gently at that. If he said something kind to her at this moment Rey feared she might crack apart into a thousand tiny slivers.

He didn’t, though. He did not say a single word. He swayed slightly and Rey swayed with him. A deep, throaty hum rumbled in his chest; she could feel the vibration against her own.

Tentatively, she raised her own arms, wrapping them around his neck.

“There,” he mumbled, “Not so bad, is it?”

“Don’t push your luck.”

He gave an amused huff.

“Rey.”

She didn’t want to pull her nose away from his neck, where his scent was strongest; warm, toasted, wintry, his essence distilled, making her mouth water. “Mm?”

“C’mere.”

He leaned back and she made to follow, intent on keeping her face against his skin, but he bent his head and then his lips were there, warm and soft and dry, against her own. A jolt went through her, starting in her diaphragm, zinging down to her toes and out to her fingertips.

Rey had been kissed before. Dosmit used to brush her lips over the top of Rey’s head when she’d had a nightmare and sought out the nun in the dead of night. Ivano had kissed her awkwardly, hesitantly, somehow both too dry and too wet, during their fumbling assignations in the cellar of Saint Padmé’s. Leia had pecked her cheek when she’d hugged Rey goodbye, as had Rose.

Kisses of solace, kisses of desperation, kisses of friendship.

This kiss was not in the same realm with any of those. This kiss was beyond comparison.

This was something alive, a conversation they were holding without speech, an exchange of more than just saliva. He was big, and strong, and for a time, Rey lost herself in the comfort and warmth of his embrace, his kiss, his body. It was a comfort she had long forgotten, to be pressed against another like this. She could feel him already, straining through his trousers, a subtle pressure against her pelvis.

She liked it.

His hand slid from her neck to her jaw and the other remained around her waist, so he could support her as he tipped her back, coaxing her mouth open with his plush lips. His tongue brushed hers and she startled so hard she nearly bit it off.

“Easy,” he murmured, into her mouth, running his hands up and down her back in slow, steady passes. “Don’t like it?”

“I’m not sure. Do it again.”

This time, she was ready, and when she felt his tongue against hers, she brushed against it with her own. It was nice, she decided, after a few minutes. Odd but nice.

The conversation went on.

Without hurry, he took a step forward; Rey’s foot, perched atop his boot, moved backward with it. He took another, then another, moving them towards the bed.

When they reached it, he laid her down on it. Gently, so gently. It was hard to fathom. How could hands that carefully lowered her down to the mattress be the same that had held a sword of flames, that had carried a rifle and bayonet into a futile war?

She thought he’d climb on top of her and lower his trousers and get to it, but he did not. He let her go, turned and sat beside her, unlacing one boot then the other. While she watched the play of muscles in his arms, Rey crossed her legs, applying pressure to where she needed it. Still he did not climb over her. He stood, sliding his suspenders off his shoulders, and then pulled his undershirt over his head.

Unlike her, he had held onto his bulk during their journey. He looked well-fed, hale. The wounds along his ribs and across his back were mostly healed; though there would always be a trail of cicatrices where Rey and the bear had done their damage, the skin was now shiny pink and healthy.

Tougher, perhaps, than it had been before.

There were dark moles dotted across the pale expanse. Had she noticed them while she was tending to him? She could not recall. In any case, she noticed now. The sudden urge to kiss each one thoroughly had her uncrossing her legs, then crossing them the other way. Two desires warred within her: she wanted to tease him with leisurely caresses, draw this out, and conversely, she wanted him to fuck her _ hard_.

Couldn’t she have both?

If she was only going to allow herself such an indulgence once, with a man who was not all bad and not all good, shouldn’t everything and anything be allowed?

It should, she resolved. So she stood and reached out a hand to run her fingertips down his spine, then up again, then over to the array of healed bear claw punctures, then in a zigzag pattern from mole to mole. Under her touch, he stiffened.

“Don’t like it?” she echoed.

This was breaking her rules, too. If this easy flirtation was not sweet nothings, then Rey did not know what was.

“Not sure,” he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice, “Do it again.”

. . .

Heated face hidden between his shoulder blades—it was so much easier to be audacious without his perceptive eyes watching her—she let her curious hands roam from the scarred flesh of his back down to his sides and over his abdomen. The muscles there weren’t quite as defined as hers; more meat on his bones.

But she could sense the strength coiled underneath. Could feel the latent power in his limbs, in his broad form.

Her fingers felt their way up to his chest. He made another throaty, needy sound when she circled each flat nipple with her blunt thumbnails.

Then she made her way south, to his waistband. She took her time with the buttons, relishing how tense he had become. _This_ was power, something in her control. He sucked in a sharp breath when she reached the last, releasing it and reaching inside to palm the hot, hard bulge in his drawers.

He turned, jostling her hand away and exposing her to his dark eyes. Meeting them, she pushed his trousers down to his ankles. Together they looked down at the tented cotton.

“These too?” he asked.

Rey almost smiled; she _ felt _like smiling, at the fond, teasing way he spoke to her. It was as if they were in cahoots over a secret.

“These, too.”

They were hastily unbuttoned and dropped to the floor.

“So you _ do _have some body hair,” she said, studying his firm thighs and the thatch of dark hair around the bobbing, thick organ straining towards her.

“Hey now.”

His finger lifted her chin upwards. She found him grinning, dimples bracketing his wide mouth. His teeth were good—white, even—though they were crooked. It added charm to his smile.

“I have plenty of body hair.”

“Hmph,” she said. “Not for an alphic man.”

He smiled so wide that internally, Rey cringed. They’d gone off the rails, for certain. This was mean to be a quick, hard fuck. An itch, scratched. A thirst, slaked. A salve, applied.

Not teasing words and tender smiles. Not soft touches.

“May I?” he asked, sliding his pointer fingers underneath each of her slip’s delicate lace straps.

She swallowed. A moment of hesitation and doubt dampened her lust; her gaze slid town to her bony, calloused feet.

“Rey.”

“Yes. Do it.”

The silk whispered as it brushed down her body and landed on the floorboards. Rey liked the way it pooled like liquid around her feet. A moat of silk, protecting her from the world.

“Beautiful.”

She scoffed. “Don’t—”

“Bossy little Omega doesn’t want to be loved on,” he grunted. Her gaze flitted up to his face; dilated pupils had pushed his irises to thin rings, but his jaw was tight again. “I know. I remember what you said.”

He appeared to be restraining himself, just barely.

“You called me a liar.”

A step closer brought his big feet inside the ring of the puddled slip, between hers. His scent was overpowering, drowning her senses. His cock pushed into her belly, leaving a wet smear behind. Rey observed that there was something slightly swollen at the thing’s base. Was that a knot, the beginnings of it? She ran her finger over the red mushroom-shaped tip and down the shaft, then over the bump. The skin was lovely, velvety soft, but underneath, it was hard.

“Between the two of us, it’s you who told lies,” he got out, though his voice was faint.

Defensively, she bared her teeth at him. “I needed—”

“I know, Rey,” he whispered in her ear, cutting her off as he wrapped her up in his arms. “I know you did.”

. . .

She danced out of his embrace and back to the bed before Kylo could kiss her slow, deep, for a long time, as he wanted. He’d intended to revel in that some more, the feel of her warm body against his.

How long had it been? A lifetime, or thereabouts.

Without her near, he already felt bereft. But the room was so flooded with her pheromones—thick, sugary, ebullient—it was as though he was wading through high tide. A comfort, that scent. And an encouragement. This felt right. Natural. Where they were meant to be.

Ripe. She smelled ripe and ready.

He’d never lied to her and he didn’t intend to start today. She _ was _beautiful. In Kylo’s eyes, she was a vision of light, of purity. Her chestnut waves gleamed in the golden light of late afternoon, reflected off the spring’s surface and back into the room, gilding everything. He drank her in. Miles and miles of long pale legs, a sweet peach-shaped derriere smattered with little freckles, a slight tuck and flare of a waist and hips, those ropey arms he’d seen execute a hundred seemingly impossible tasks for a woman and an Omega. Pretty little tits. Strong shoulders. 

Strong everything.

But thin, far thinner than healthy. Too many bones protruding through skin. They’d get to that; he’d work the land until his hands bled if it meant he could feed her what she needed.

As her Alpha, it would be his duty and his privilege.

“Enough,” she growled at him, curving her back as she settled onto her knees, her lovely, shining pink pussy presented for his perusal. “Enough nonsense. Do what you said you’d do.”

So.

Here he was, no better than a junkyard dog, snatching up whatever scraps she would feed him. But once she had his knot, there’d be no running or hiding from his affection. From what he had to feed her, for the time being.

Kylo Ren was Alpha enough to admit to himself that he was already besotted with Rey. Had been since she shot him and sliced open his face; from that moment on, he’d been hers. But she was tired, she was famished, and he had no doubt that she was all mixed up over her dead kin.

He’d spent many of his formative years locked up in a world of asceticism, a world with only the barest, simple pleasures. A world without sex or sin. But he’d learned a few things on his permissionnaires in France during the war, when he’d desperately sought out whatever comfort and pleasure he could find—things that had gone unused for years now. It was time for him to brush them off and put them to good use. He was going to nourish her, in whatever fashion she might permit.

Gripping himself, giving one good rough tug to take the edge off, Kylo clambered onto the bed.

. . .

At first, it went exactly how she’d envisioned it.

He teased her for only an instant before sinking a finger inside. Even just that was a noticeable intrusion; it had been years for her, and he was a big man with beautifully thick, long fingers. A crook of that very finger had her elbows shaking; the addition of his thumb rubbing tight little circles against her nearly incapacitated her. She sprawled out on the mattress, unable to hold up her own weight.

She was soaking the sheets, she could _ feel _the mess she was making; slick dripping down to her knees. Groaning into the musty-smelling pillow she’d dragged away from the headboard, she pushed back against his hand, delivering herself into his care.

That seemed to be the sign he was looking for.

His fingers were withdrawn, eliciting a whimper of distress from Rey. She heard him suck them clean. A second later they were smoothing up her back; long, solid strokes. Calming, careful. Next she felt his knees pushing at her sticky inner thighs, forcing her to open her legs wider. One arm snaked around her, momentarily pulling her up so he could slide another pillow under her hips. Then he lowered her down again.

Another thoughtful gesture. Rey kept her face hidden so he would not see the emotions it stirred up in her.

“Ready, Omega?”

As he asked, he was nudging himself against her. Though she couldn’t see, daren’t look back, she knew the look of him now—so different and yet so similar to Ivano, but bigger maybe, his cock an angrier-looking creature than poor Ivano’s had been—and could only imagine the sopping, lascivious sight she must be.

He notched the flared head inside with a gradual rocking motion. That alone took some effort, despite how slick and lax she felt.

_We'll both need a bath after this, _ she thought, errantly.

The rhythm he set was gentle, just pushing against the front wall of her cunt, like he was exploring the feel of her with the head of his cock. It was unfair for him to be so delicate with her, when she’d told him in no uncertain terms how she wanted it.

“Do it,” she spat at him, muffled by the pillow. “Just _ bloody _do it.”

That spurred him on. A hand landed heavily on her shoulder blade, to balance himself. And then he thrust home, filling her up in one go, drawing a raw keening noise from her she hadn’t known she could make.

Full, full, full. It was the very brink of what she could handle; she wiggled her hips, trying to get more comfortable, trying to adjust to his girth, trying to hurry her cunt along.

“Happy now?”

“I’d be happy if you fucked me like I asked.”

She got no answer save for an angry, exhaled puff of air on her skin. Hand still clamped on her shoulder like a vise, he pulled his hips back, sliding out of her. A wet noise accompanied the motion, to Rey’s utter shame.

“Don’t hide your face from me,” he bit out, and slammed back inside, skin slapping against skin.

Rey stayed as she was, and a moment of stilted silence ensued. She waited for him to thrust again, to get to _ work _already, but he stayed where he was, too, just lazily rolling his hips, grinding himself against her, sending sparks up her spine and enticing her cunt to clench down around him. It felt so good she nearly cried with relief and anger and need. Pushing up onto her elbows, she twisted her head to meet his angry gaze; through the pleasure, she did her best to fix him with an accusatory glare.

“Isn’t this what you needed, Rey?”

His expression bordered on defiant, almost. Obstinate. Like he was daring her to say she didn’t like this—this slow, messy grind, the feeling of him inside, not pounding as she’d expected, but simply filling and warming and pushing. Simply giving.

“Get _ on _with it.”

“This _ is _it,” he snarled. Surging forward, he caged her in. Hands on either side of her waist, and he pressed her into the mattress with his mass, keeping her pinned. His hips went on with their easy, steady rolling.

“Just—” she tried, but she couldn’t think like this. It felt good; it felt too good. “Just—just fuck me already!”

He rolled his eyes, but his chin tipped in a polite nod.

“Yes, ma’am.”

The first thrust after he rose up onto his knees again took her breath away and pushed her so far across the mattress that the pillow she’d been holding fell off the other side. His arm slid under her, lingering for a second on her breasts, cupping each in turn as he punched forward, sharp and fast. It was as if he wanted to feel their soft weight bounce in his palms; because now he _ was _working her over in earnest, making what little she had to jiggle, do so. The thrusts kept coming, hard and fast, and his hand slid across her body, up to the ball of her shoulder to secure her to him.

To keep from fucking her off the side of the bed, which he was in danger of doing.

Soppy, squelching noises and the slapping of his hips against her bottom were the only sounds she could hear besides the wild salvo of her own thundering heart and his harsh breathing in her ear. Their combined smell hung heavy in the air, sex and need and sweat. His weight was off her, applied to the hand he’d planted in the mattress beside her head. It felt like he was driving up into her gut, like she could place her hand on her belly and feel him from within.

The propulsion of his fucking left her breathless. It was ruthless, how he fucked her. A piston; pounding, taking. This was what she’d wanted.

Wasn’t it?

No, no. It was. It felt good, it felt right.

For a time, she lost herself to this breathless plundering, this frantic coupling, shoving back against him, trying to give back as good as she was getting but barely able to keep up. Then the flare of his growing knot caught outside her folds on a thrust, and Rey flailed, unable to control how wildly her hips jerked in response.

_ Now, now, now, _screamed her body, screamed her hindbrain. 

“You want this?”

He sounded smug, the bastard. It might’ve been a rhetorical question but Rey was taking no chances.

“Yes,” she ground out. “Kylo, yes, yes yes, _ please_—”

“Shh, shhh.” He drew back, almost all the way out, just the tip inside, teasing her with short, tight pulses. “You never—have to—beg me. Not—for anything.”

On the next proper thrust, he drove forward _ hard_, burying himself deep inside. Deep enough that his knot parted her lips, deep enough that it slid up into her, into place. There was no definitive noise to notify her that this was _ it_, beside the sodden sounds of their joining, but in Rey’s mind, she thought she heard a ‘click’, as though two mechanical pieces had been locked together. He felt rooted inside of her, swelling even further, giving her far more than she’d ever thought she could take.

He did not pull out again.

So this was knotting.

Wet warmth, warmer and wetter than what had come before, bloomed inside her cunt. Kylo nosed at her shoulder, then collapsed on top of her with a long groan.

A minute passed, then two, both of them panting in tandem. The heat inside did not ebb. Was that _ still _ him, spilling inside her? She asked as much.

“Y-yes,” he muttered, giving another jerk of his hips.

His lips and teeth scraped over her shoulder in a clumsy kiss. Then inwards, closer to her neck, then upwards, perilously close to the throbbing gland behind her jaw. The one that would bind them together, should he bite into it right now. The one that would keep her linked to him for all eternity, that would—according to what she’d heard and read—mingle their senses and emotions and, it had been rumored, even their thoughts.

“_Don’t_!”

“I know, I know.”

He wandered away, still biting and sucking, across the nape of her neck, to her other shoulder.

“Don’t worry, I won’t.”

His fingers found her clitoris again; he began to gently stroke it.

“I don’t need—” she began, sighing, but he cut her off:

“What kind of Alpha would I be if I didn’t help my sweet Omega come on my knot?”

She sputtered at the obscenity of such a question, at his audacious lewdness, at his troubling use of the possessive. But she did not protest further; in fact, she began to roll her hips in time with his, gingerly, not parting _ from _ him but moving together _ with _ him, as his thumb rubbed at her.

Long-neglected muscles inside her tensed tighter and tighter, to the point of agony, forcing a needy, thready cry from her lips. She curled her toes, to relieve some pressure.

“That’s it,” he soothed. “That’s it. Let it go, Rey. You’ve been so good for so long—such a good, strong Omega. You can have this now—let yourself have this.”

On a shuddering exhale, everything within her burst into a fluttering riot, starting in her cunt, squeezing on his cock, his knot, drawing another gush of warmth from him, and then moving out to her thighs and her spasming abdominal muscles, her shaking arms, her curled toes.

He moaned, Rey whimpered. In delight, in horror, in ecstasy, she whimpered.

Then her whole body sagged, wrung out. Kylo was still hard inside, still spilling into her, filling her. She’d always thought she’d hate the feeling; it was definitely foreign and strange, but also it was a balm, cooling her, calming her. He snuffled against her neck and rolled them both onto their sides, tangling his legs with hers. And then, and then.

All the conflict, all the anger and turmoil, all of it floated away. There was only relief.

She felt so _ good_.

. . .

He’d wrapped his arms around her, holding her against his body like a ragdoll just in case she got the wild notion in her head to try to pull away from him while he was still hard and knotted inside her. It was only a precaution; Rey was docile now, her head pillowed on his bicep, her fingers running up and down the forearm banded across her belly.

There was a bruise forming on the ball of her shoulder where he’d gripped her too hard. He laid an apologetic kiss over it.

His climax was finally ebbing, but from experience, he knew it would be a while before the knot went down enough to pull out. And with how frenzied her scent made him, how hungry he was for her body, there was a good chance that instead of going down, he’d stay hard, and come again.

But for right now, they were calm and quiet. She nuzzled at the flesh of his inner arm, making a soft contented sound in her throat, and a wave of protectiveness engulfed Kylo.

What wouldn’t he give to keep this? To keep her?

What a mess. A physical mess, the sheets ruined with their combined perspiration and essences. And a spiritual mess, a storm of need and desire.

“Henrietta,” he breathed, enjoying the way the syllables rolled around on his tongue.

“That’s not my name.”

“It was once, though.”

He felt her stiffen and prepare to pull away from him, so he craned his neck and gave her another soft kiss, this one on her sunken cheek. His free hand slid down to gently touch her again, the pad of his thumb teasing, then rubbing, teasing, then rubbing.

“I wasn't always Kylo Ren.”

Either his words or his actions halted her; he hardly cared, when the end result meant she relaxed against him. 

"Who were you?" she asked, in a small voice.

"A headstrong fool."

"And here I thought you meant you used to be _ different_."

Her sharp tongue never failed to make him grin, even when her indictments were directed at him.

“Not in that regard. But I used a different name.”

She stayed silent, continued stroking his arm as he stroked her. He wondered if Leia had given Rey that half of her surname, if she'd recognize it.

“Ben… Solo,” he said, faltering slightly; it was difficult to get out. He could remember the last time that name had been spoken aloud. It had been the night before he’d fled Saint Benoît’s. There were so many memories attached to that name—so much history.

So much ruin.

“I—I met a Solo once,” she said.

His heart stuttered. “Not a common name.”

“No… I don’t think it is.”

“Might've been kin.”

“Might've been,” she said lightly.

Her eyes were downcast. He wanted to veer away from the topic; she didn’t seem to be in any rush to discuss it, either. In fact, she shifted forward, settling onto her belly; he had to go with her, plastering himself against her back, so as not to hurt either of them where they were joined. The movement jostled his cock in her tight, plush cunt; unconsciously, he suspected, she squeezed him, and then there was no helping it. A shiver ran through him. A pressure he had not realized was building in his balls, gave way. With a helpless grunt, he came again.

She made it difficult to keep his head about him, to keep rubbing her, keep giving that slow, subtle pleasure, when she felt so good.

“Was that…?”

“Yes,” he said, guttural. “I can’t—I can’t stop—”

“That’s alright. It’s—” she paused, considering, “—fine.”

“You like it?”

He used the last of his frayed focus to bring the pad of his thumb back to her clitoris, grinding down on the small bud.

“Ah,” she breathed, throwing her head back against his shoulder.

Her eyes rolled towards his, languid, then they slid shut.

They couldn’t get any closer; they were lying chest to back, his arms around her, holding her, legs tangled. He curled himself tighter, bringing his face down to her neck, right where her hot glands smelled the strongest.

Sweet and syrupy, a baked treat. A morsel.

All for him.

Her shoulder rose and fell. “It’s… I don’t mind it.”

“You feel good, Rey?”

The feeling of her clenching down around him, throbbing, hot, the concomitant flood of slick that seeped forth, some of it escaping around his knot, sent him barreling into orgasm. He’d lost count of how many he’d had already.

“Good,” he said through gritted teeth as they came together. “You’re so damn good. Tell me you feel good, please, do you feel good—you _ have _to feel good—let your Alpha make you feel—” 

“I do,” she whispered.

When he sought out her lips, she did not negotiate her way out of the kiss. She let him love on her at his leisure; slow, meandering kisses, around her face, back to her lips, exploring her tongue with his, leaving nothing unspoken with his body, even if so much went unsaid with words. She even reciprocated, kissing him back, reaching back to grip his thigh, keep him close.

He could hardly restrain his satisfied hum, even as the euphoria ebbed. This was his job, wasn’t it? Why he was here?

That’s where he should leave it. He shouldn’t push; she’d said she felt good. That should be enough. But he had to open his big mouth.

“It’s nice like this, isn’t it.”

She sent back a sleepy smile, the prettiest thing he’d ever seen. A smile. Rey was smiling at him. After months of snarling and shouting and snapping, she was smiling at _ him_.

“You have a perfect cunt,” he declared.

“Kylo!”

“Ben,” he corrected. “You’ll call me Ben when I touch you like this, in our bed.”

Her eyes flew up to his on the word ‘our’, then hastily flitted away, staring at the bare wooden wall across from them.

“Ben,” she said, slow, testing out the name. “Ben Solo…” 

He slid his pointer and middle finger down to caress her damp lips, bracketing the base of his knot holding him inside.

“Pretty and perfect,” he went on. “Soft.” He lifted the sticky fingers to his mouth, tasting her again. To him, her taste was like her scent: elemental and addictive. It was not exactly the same, yet it was. She tasted tangy, briny. But all he could think, all he could say was, “Sweet.”

_ Rey Solo, _ he thought. There was no one around to marry them, but it was the end of the world, wasn’t it? Couldn’t they just declare themselves bound to each other?

Couldn’t he give her a name he’d forsaken and take it back up for himself? Couldn’t he be Benjamin Solo again, easy as you please? Maybe he had been all along, to himself, in his heart. It was his name to do with as he wanted, anyway.

They could be happy here. 

Kylo lifted himself on an elbow to voice his thoughts, but her eyes were closed, lovely eyelashes fanned out over too-sharp, freckled cheekbones. Her breathing was slow and even, that of a good sleep found at last. 

Nevermind. The suggestion could wait.

He would do whatever he had to, in order to make and keep her happy.

. . .

She woke some time later to the feeling of a tongue lapping at her sticky thighs. Outside, she discovered upon opening her eyes, night was settling in, the world was dark, a heavy rain battering at the windows.

And he was cleaning her with his mouth.

It was a heady, primal sight. She did her best to commit it to memory.

Was it depravity to like this? Rey decided then that she didn't care. His dark hair framed his downcast face like a curtain, though she could glimpse his big ears through it; his eyes flitted up to meet hers and she caught the corner of his mouth tick upwards in a lopsided smile. His licks were only administered to her inner thighs, not touching her sex, which, at the sight of him between her legs, gave a tingling throb, letting her know just how un-immune she was to the visual.

“Kylo?”

“Ben,” he corrected between licks. Then: “Messy girl. My messy little Omega.”

She rolled her hips, trying to offer her cunt to him, trying to redirect his mouth. “Is that bad?”

“Shh, no. Never. It’s good, so good,” he said, mouthing at her now-clean skin.

It was difficult to think through the storm of hormones and sensation; her need was like wildfire, roaring across her skin, inextinguishable.

“Plea—”

“There, there,” he soothed, still licking. “Let me clean you up.”

His mouth wandered down the creases between thigh and backside, finding every bit of dried slick or come, leaving damp, shining flesh in his wake.

“Good?”

“Good.”

“How about here? Did we make a mess here?”

His lips closed over that tiny scrap of needy flesh, suckling. Rey’s hips thrust up at him of their own volition, the sudden jolt of pleasure stealing her breath.

“Y-yes,” she gasped. “Oh, yes.”

“Better clean it up,” he said, speaking against her, the vibration making her buck again.

He settled a forearm over her belly, sending another almost-smirk her way, eyes gleaming, then resumed his efforts, lower this time. Proud, jutting nose pushed up against that throbbing bud, he mouthed at her folds, practically gorging himself on new slick as quickly as her body could produce it.

He’d been correct; she was a mess. She thought of nothing but his mouth. The feeling of him there, licking her, drinking from her, suckling, making love to her as he visited each part of her anatomy—now her folds, now the entirety of her, leaving no inch of her undiscovered, now licking up into her, now paying her needy bud the attention it demanded, now back to her folds—it was too much.

With a sharp cry, she came. Legs kicking at his torso, hands gripping the wooden headboard like a lifeline, she came and came, cunt clamping down, everything gone sharp and bright and then soft and wet and supine.

“A-_ah_,” was all she could get out. “Ben!”

Still he drank from her. Until another peak rose and crested and broke within her, and then another, and another after that, until she tangled trembling fingers in his hair and tugged his face away from her cunt—he drank, and licked, and sucked.

He was not a good man. But this was not the lovemaking of a bad one, was it? Could a lover this generous be entirely a monster?

_ Killer_, she reminded herself. _ Tyrant. _

It cooled her fervor, though not as completely as she would have liked. And when he wandered lower, nudging with his tongue at the opening she had not expected, she squeaked in alarm. But he showed no sign of disgust or hesitance; he just licked her clean of slick and come. Under threat of death, she could not have admitted aloud how much she liked that, how good it felt.

But she did.

“Smell good there, too,” he said, with a quirked brow, as he returned to her thighs, where her slick was once more smeared. He got to work again, starting the whole process anew, and Rey, worn out from so many orgasms, from being cared for as she had not been in so long, simply watched him do it.

Softly, so softly she suspected it was not meant for her, he added, “Like you’re _ mine_.”

Upon hearing those words, she _ knew _ how this would end, but she did not have the strength—consumed by her heat, by her lust, by her need—to do what needed to be done.

Not yet. 

. . .

“One for sorrow,” she half-hummed, half-murmured, some time later, as they lounged in the bed, Rey draped over his solid form like an unstrung marionette. The fever was rising in her again; soon, she knew, she would need him. But this was a languid, peaceful moment.

“Two for joy,” came his deep baritone. It was as lovely a singing voice as it had been in Illinois, but still surprising; she still struggled to picture him as a man who sang.

“Three for an omegan girl, four for an alphic boy.”

He gave her a sharp look. “Rey…”

“Don’t worry—there won’t be a babe,” she assured him.

Was that a fleeting look of hurt that passed across his face? It was there and gone too quickly for her to identify its meaning.

“Okay,” was his only response. Then: “Will you tell me about Saint… Padmé’s? What it was like there?”

She shrugged. “Not much to tell.”

“She was a good woman.”

“Who?” Her voice was sharper than she’d intended.

“Padmé.”

“Oh,” said Rey. “Yes, I suppose so. That’s what the nuns and monks always told us.”

“I wonder, sometimes, if Anakin Skywalker would’ve pursued the Discovery had she still been alive,” he mused quietly. “What might have been, if she had been there with him?”

His expression was distant; he was staring up at the beams and joists under the roof. The tips of his fingers brushed lazy trails up and down her back, and Rey nuzzled her face against the underside of his jaw, all of a sudden feeling an instinctual need to comfort him.

“Hm,” he rumbled, seemingly pleased by the gesture. “Good Omega.”

She sighed at that praise, torn between gloating over it and slapping him for his impudence.

“It all would've happened anyway,” she reasoned. “He was a brilliant mind, in the right place at the right time. Being a widower and a Beta himself was certainly… an important element of the bigger equation. But if he hadn’t wanted to do the research, someone else would have.”

“Right place, right time,” echoed Kylo. His eyes flicked down to meet hers. “I know something about that.”

She squirmed against him, reveling in the heady feeling of being wanted. There was a noticeable lack of conversation after that.

. . .

He was fucking her hard, just how she'd wanted it. Bent over the kitchen table—dishes rattling off the sides, precious food going to waste—she held fast to the opposite end. They were rocking it across the rough floorboards with every thrust. Feasting on their own need. They were truly like animals.

Sweaty, snarling at each other, hungry. So hungry.

A rainy sunset had witnessed their fucking and then a rainy sunrise had witnessed fucking and now the sun was sinking again—and still it rained—and here they were. They had barely stopped except to doze, still knotted, and make the occasional run out to the commode behind the garden.

Rey had gone both times in only her boots, not bothering with clothing, desperate to relieve herself and return to him. She’d come back chilled, soaked. Shivering but feeling _ alive_. He’d beckoned to her from the filthy bed with open arms and an eager mouth, like she’d been on a long and perilous journey and needed to be properly welcomed home. Warmed in his arms, dried by his radiant heat.

And then she had giggled against the pillow as he’d inched his cock into her ready cunt, enjoying his own low rumbling laugh, a proper welcome indeed—both of them delirious with rut and heat and sex and pleasure and effervescent joy.

Now she was not giggling, she was gasping with each sharp thrust. Her hips, she suspected, would be bruised from the edge of the table, as her shoulder was, where he’d grabbed at her during their first time.

Bruises were a small price to pay for how good this felt, how right. Like it was meant to be. Maybe they were not even a price; maybe they were a souvenir.

For when this was over.

She'd come on his tongue twice, sprawled out on this very table, before he'd hauled her off of it, spun her, and bent her over.

Like an Alpha. There'd been a look in his eyes when he'd done it; Rey was not well-versed in the ways of Alphas outside of cautionary tales and a few harrowing escapes from them, but she suspected he was in rut.

The teasing, bawdy things he'd said to her yesterday had dissipated to mostly grunts and groans and hums. He'd kept his face near her at all times, smelling her, tasting her. There was something feral about it, his rut, in a way that seemed to answer her own feral need.

So here they were, Kylo—_Ben_, she amended—driving into her, and Rey, happily rocking back to meet each thrust. His hands clamped over hers on the table’s edge, which served to halt their voyage across the kitchen. Then: his knot at her entrance, demanding.

There was no speaking this time. He growled at her, she yowled back, he pushed inside, the swelling knot secured them together, her whole world burst into a phantasmagoria of color and sound and scent and pleasure.

He slumped atop her as he came—and came and came and came—pressing her into the hard table. Still he seemed unable to remove his face from her skin. Grunting softly, spilling inside her, he rubbed his cheek against the crown of her head, like he was marking her in more ways than one.

Bruises. There would be bruises on her body and her soul. They were all but a guarantee.

. . .

“Good,” he said, some time later, calm at last. It was the first word either of them had spoken in nearly a day. “Good girl.”

She murmured her agreement with that assessment; she felt good at the moment, very sated and very good.

Arms wrapped around her, Kylo stumbled backwards onto one of the stools, settling her in his lap, her legs draped over his. One big hand came to rest on her belly, pushing ever-so-slightly against where he was seated inside. In response, she crooned, and her cunt gave a wanton quiver.

“You should eat. I’ll make food, after…”

She pretended to think about it. “Yes.”

His hand crept down, touching her as he spoke. “The general store has enough to keep us going through to next summer, but we’ll have to think about livestock and crops.”

Despite the easy, gentle orgasm he was coaxing out of her, she felt her terror hit like a bucket of ice water to the face. She was still in heat, she still needed him here, she did not want to have this conversation. It wasn’t time; she wasn’t ready.

“No,” was all she could muster.

“No?”

“I don’t want—let’s not talk about those things.”

“We… have to,” he protested.

She let her head roll back against his shoulder as she shook it. “No we don’t.”

“Rey.”

His fingers froze, resting firmly against her, but he was not so cruel as to remove them altogether.

“Ben,” she replied flatly.

A finger against her jaw turned her head; she let him do it, meeting his searching gaze, noting without comment his wild eyes and lips, pursing and relaxing, pursing and relaxing.

“You don’t want to stay in Jakku?” he asked. “You could… it might not be perfect, but the First Order—”

“No,” she said, too sharp, interrupting him. “No.”

He frowned at her. “Well what _ do _ you want?”

“I want to not talk about this.”

“…Okay,” he sighed after a moment, then he laid his cheek on her head, resting. Rey let her eyes shut; cunt full of his knotted cock, heart too full of emotions she could not abide. His fingers resumed their teasing, and she pushed herself against him, encouraging it. “Okay, I’m sorry.”

“Me too.”

She reached back, encircling his neck with her arms. “Make me feel good, Ben. That’s all I want.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

. . .

As the peachy light of the next morning’s clear-skied dawn painted the prairielands in shades of gold and copper, they snuck from the house to the general store to forage for supplies, murmuring conspiratorially about food choices as they went. There was something easy and carefree in the way they spoke to each other in that dawn, voices low, laughing softly.

Companionable.

Once they’d filled a burlap sack with what they needed, they passed back out onto the road. Kylo tugged on Rey’s hand, eager to get back inside, but her eyes caught on the porch of the saloon and she slipped free of his grasp in order to make a detour.

“Rey?”

He looked like a lost little boy standing there with his hand still open and extended, like he couldn’t understand what had just happened.

“I’ll only be a moment,” she assured him, and slipped up the steps, then through the saloon’s swinging doors.

It should have been no surprise that the bar was well stocked, considering how surprisingly undisturbed everywhere else had been in Jakku. Rey still found herself a little taken aback, though, at seeing shelf upon shelf of untouched bottles of spirits behind the gleaming oaken counter.

What _ was _ Jakku? What had it _ been_? Who had _ they _been, they who had lived here and died here and fled here?

Who had her parents been?

The sight of this dusty, well-stocked bar seemed to slip between the plates of her mental armor; Rey felt a sob rising up within her. She would never know. _ Could not _ever know. Like Chandrila, like London, like every abandoned town along the way, Jakku had no answers for her.

It was simply empty and still. It was as the whole world was: waiting. As she was, too. As she had been for her entire journey. And for what? What were they all awaiting? A return to the way things had been? For someone to come back for them all, save them all?

No one had come back for Jakku, except for Rey and Kylo. There would be no renewal of life here, not ever again. There would be no bustle, no inebriated roar of laughter or jangling ragtime tune from the upright piano that stood against the staircase. Drawing close to it, Rey pressed the C major chord into the dusty cream-colored keys.

The noise that came from within the piano was cacophonous and grating.

_ No one is coming back for me. _

It was out of tune. How could they ever begin at the beginning, as Dosmit had always bid her, with an unloved, out-of-tune piano such as this?

How could they go on? To what end? What was the _point_?

Another swell of emotion washed over her at the sight of Kylo’s bedroll, laid out upon the hardwood floor beside his opened knapsack, from which his things had been removed and arranged neatly on a nearby table.

_ Who _ are _ you? _ she wondered. _ Who were you? _

_ Will someone come back for _ you_? _

Rey knew what the clarity of these thoughts and emotions meant. But she was not yet ready to let go of her heat. She did not know what would come after it, and her fear made her cling to the small, temporary comfort she had allowed herself.

The squeaking of the door hinges alerted her to Kylo’s entrance; she turned to find him hovering, leaned against the wall, the burlap sack left outside. He watched her with shuttered eyes, his expression guarded.

She sent him a smile, though it felt crooked, and she was not sure it reached her eyes. Then she traipsed over to the bar and ducked behind it. She fetched a bottle of bourbon from the shelf and uncorked it, pulled a glass out from under the counter, poured two fingers worth, and swallowed it in one go. It burned fiercely on the way down, making her cough. His dark gaze never strayed from her.

Taking slow, cautious steps, like they were once again in the forest with her rifle aimed on him, he approached the bar.

After refilling the glass, she nudged it his way. His fingers brushed hers as he picked it up, a quick caress, and she noticed that he made sure to place his lips on the rim where hers had been.

He drained it, just as she had.

“Don’t really care for spirits,” she told him.

“Coulda’ fooled me.”

She grimaced. “I just…”

“What?” he asked, head tilted, brows furrowed.

_ It’s ebbing, _ she wanted to tell him. _ And I don’t want it too. I want the fever back, but it’s passing, and with it returns reason, and sense, and the end of this, whatever this was. The true end of everything. _

“Nothing,” she said.

“C’mon.” It wasn’t clear to her if he sensed the words that had gone unspoken; but he watched her closely as he stepped to the end of the bar and held out his hand for her once more. Like he was assessing her state of mind. Like he understood where her thoughts had traveled. “Let’s go home.”

Not home, never home. Her home was a thousand miles away, and her home was six feet under the dark Jakku dirt, and her home was nowhere. What had she _ done_, coming here? What lunacy had possessed her? What was the meaning of any of this?

_ He’s right, _ she thought, staring up at his pleading face. _ You gave up, long ago. This was not meant to be a beginning, but an end. _

And this heat?

The last.

She needed him then, needed him desperately, so she launched herself towards him. His eyes widened but he caught her as her body barreled into his, neck craning, already seeking his full lips. He kissed her back readily, without question, holding her tight.

As though he _ knew_.

“Please,” she began to say, but before the word had even passed her lips, she was met with:

“Okay.”

Together, they stumbled out onto the wide porch of the saloon, still kissing frantically. With careless haste, they stripped each other down to their naked bodies. What did it matter if they fucked right here, in the open, for all and sundry to witness?

There was no point in modesty because there was no one left to see except maybe God and Rey did not think, given their present circumstances, that God cared very much about them.

He palmed her, working a finger inside, testing her readiness. She was wet, she could feel it, and she could hear it. “Yes,” she breathed, and he nodded.

This time was different from all the others, for this time, he walked her back against the outer wall of the saloon, and gripped her thighs, tugging, urging her to jump up onto him.

“Ben?”

“I’ve got you,” he said, low. “Trust me.”

With a sharp inhale and a nod, she leapt.

He caught her. And pressed against the rough clapboard siding, he sought out her cunt, nudging at the entrance with his cock, wetting himself in her folds. Then he pushed in, slow, easy, big hands gripping her bottom, supporting her.

His eyes never left hers.

They had not done this face to face in all the times that had come before. She had not seen how his nostrils flared and his eyes widened as he buried himself to the growing knot, had not watched how his lips had quivered on each shuddering exhalation.

The clapboard was rough against her back, especially when he gave the first roll of his hips, sliding her up the wall a couple inches and then back down. It hurt, but she relished the hurt. She stared back at him, barely able to breathe from the intimacy, as he thrust again.

“I love—” he started to say, and she thought maybe she could sense the next words, could almost hear them before they were even spoken: _ you_. 

Rey could not bear that, could not allow him to speak such a sentiment aloud, so she gripped the back of his neck and brought his mouth down to hers, kissing him greedily, stealing the words into herself, locking them away.

It took hardly any time at all for him to bury his knot inside her. Then Rey experienced another first: just his knotted cock alone, just his warm seed buried inside her, just his body against hers, and just his sad eyes staring down at her, dark and full of broken need—these were enough to make her come, cunt clenching and toes curled.

With her head back thrown against the wooden clapboard, Kylo sucking on her neck—right where, she imagined, like him, her scent was the strongest—Rey cried out her pleasure, letting her lustful noises roll down the empty street, for nothing mattered anymore and it felt good to be loud.

Plus, she could tell he was enraptured, watching her, his ego flattered; this kept him from attempting to repeat that sentiment to which she had no answer.

She did not love him back.

She did not. She could not. She _ would _not.

. . .

After they’d eaten, they went down to the sandy bank of the nearby spring, whose name was known to neither Rey nor Kylo. There they laid out a blanket, on which they sipped their tea, brewed from old leaves that just barely stained the water brown.

For a little while, they were calm. Rey basked in the sunlight, toes buried in the damp sand, dressed in only her slip, grubby from days of wear and reeking of sex. Kylo lay beside her, playing idly with her hair; he wore only his trousers and boots, not bothering with more clothing when the weather was so fair and they both knew it was only a matter of time.

And sure enough, upon finishing their tea, Kylo reached for her and she went happily, settling herself astride his lap, licking at the bittersweet flavor in his mouth. He took his tea with too much sugar. That was just one of a hundred details she’d learned about him, during fleeting moments as their sense somewhat returned to them.

Things she now knew about him: he’d learned French while at the Québécoise monastery, but had never mastered the language. Rudimentary though his skill may have been, they proved useful when he’d found himself stationed in France during the war. He did not speak of his family, and did not pressure her to speak of hers. He’d learned calligraphy at the monastery too, and demonstrated his skills for her with a stick in the wet sand upon her request. He wrote her name so beautifully that she nearly cried when a gentle wave washed up on the shore and erased it. He loved sweets. He disliked heights, a side effect of flying in rickety aeroplanes during the war, but he did not want Snoke to know of his fear, so he had chosen to haunt the highest parts of the jagged fortress’s ramparts whenever he could, in an effort to master it.

He dreamed of blood-stained hands and a thick fog rolling across the world, leaving ruin in its wake.

He dreamed of the past, as she did.

He looked at her and touched her like she was something incredibly valuable. Priceless, even. Though she did not ask, she surmised he must not be completely unlearned in the ways of women, for he seemed to be able to reduce her to whimpering moans and prolonged, rolling waves of pleasure without instruction.

_ You must not love him, _she told herself, once they’d satisfied themselves, right there on the beach. His cock was hard and hot and pulsing inside her, filling her womb with alphic seed, and her slick was all over his thighs. He held her by the hips, and tilted her back to kiss her, lackadaisical and gentle, the frenzy of their coupling behind them. They parted, breathless. His eyes were the color of gold-flecked amber in the brilliant sunlight.

Tentatively, he offered her a smile. Rey placed a soft kiss on his lips then rested her head on his chest and placed her right palm over where she could feel his heart galloping.

_ You do not need this, _ she told herself, and nearly flinched from how hollow the words rang in her own head.

She hated that it was ending, and hated even more that she hated it.

_ The slaking, the salve, the scratch, _ she told herself, again and again, but in her heart, she was not convinced.

In her heart, she saw this mantra for what it was: lies.

. . .

Many hours and several rounds of fucking later, Rey awoke in bed, still knotted to Kylo. He clung to her, aquiline nose buried in her hair. In this position, her own nose was once again pressed up against the scarred column of his throat. She inhaled deeply, sated, sleepy, drunk on pleasure and companionship and the winter’s bite of his pheromones, the last of his rut.

With no more than a peaceful sigh, she slipped back into deep, dark sleep.

. . .

When she woke in the morning, Kylo huddled against her back, snoring in her ear, she found her herself fully returned, sensate once more. Clear of mind, thoughts ordered, and calm of body. The fever had abated.

Her heat had well and truly passed.

It was all over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/you-fit-into-me/)?
> 
> What is [milk thistle](https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-138/milk-thistle)?
> 
> A little [ghost town inspo](https://www.laketexoma.com/entertainment--four-ghost-towns-under-lake-texoma/296) somebody on Twitter sent me!
> 
> [Leave taking](https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/soldiers_on_leave) during WWI (sort of the model for what Private Ben Solo would've lived through).
> 
> Oddly enough, those are my only notes for this chapter! Turns out smut does not need as much researching, imagine that. Also, I realize that by this point Jakku's general store has become like a magical catch-all full of everything they could possibly need and given how long the town was abandoned, this is probably not realistic but much like Rey, I am very tired and did not feel like spending more time or devoting more words to survival things during these chapters, because the emotional stuff happening here was more important to me. Consider this like... a brief reprieve from the whole survivalism thing, until the supplies in the general store run out, lol 😂
> 
> I _also_ realize now that the link for the pitcher and washbowl should've gone here but I already added it so 🤷♀️
> 
> Anyway, that's all from me! I want to thank you for reading this far, for sticking with me through the slow start and the taxing journey these two have been on. I hope the smuttening was sufficient! I know it had a sad edge to it but happy days will come again, I promise. Thank you for reading! 💙


	15. Because he dreams of seeding the world with words his eyes bite She looks He looks away He is snow-blind from staring at her breasts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello if you have not already please go log onto Twitter dot Com and follow the incredible [HouseofFinches](https://twitter.com/HouseOfFinches/), not only because they drew this [utterly pitch-perfect](https://twitter.com/HouseOfFinches/status/1186120216603959298) rendition of that heavy moment between Kylo and Rey, but because they are inordinately talented! Thank you again for your incredible illustrations, HoF! 💜

**Rey barely remembers the walk from the grave to the washroom. She barely remembers the bath she draws for herself, except that it is too hot, and that she does not care. She barely remembers dressing herself afterwards.**

**Clean and clothed, she pushes herself up the rickety, winding stairs of the home. She shuffles down the hallway attic until she reaches Dosmit’s room.**

**It is untouched.**

**Long minutes pass as she stands on the threshold, taking in the unmade bed, the nightstand, the small dresser by the far wall, the single window letting in the morning daylight. The empty armchair and the hand-woven rug on the floor, where she and Dosmit passed so many quiet afternoons.**

**With a deep breath, she steps inside. She moves forward, slowly. One step. Another. And another, until she can crawl into Dosmit’s bed and pull the covers up to her chin like a frightened child, not caring if she catches the Lover’s Death. She hasn’t caught it so far, after years of tending to those dying from it; in all likelihood, she is immune.**

**Rey gives in to her sorrow once more, letting deep sobs wrack through her. The violence of her weeping makes her chest ache and her eyes burn, but she does not fight it. She spends the entire day that way, staring at the white walls, crying, grieving not only for the woman she has lost but for the life she is now resolved to leave behind.**

**But the wheels in her mind are turning. So when she wakes in the middle of the night, disoriented and alone, she rises from the bed, making it as neatly as Dosmit would have. By candlelight, she rifles through the drawers of Dosmit’s nightstand and dresser, not knowing what she’ll find or even if she plans to take anything.**

**Or if there are more terrible secrets waiting to be discovered.**

**The dresser holds little of interest. Dosmit’s clothing, shoes, random knick-knacks; communal things that needed a storage place. In the bottom drawer, hidden underneath a collection of table cloths, there is an old canvas knapsack that smells faintly of brine. Rey grabs it.**

**The nightstand is as it was the last time she looked: a bible, the rosary, the letter, the Pist-o-liter.**

**In the end she takes everything but the bible, carefully securing them in the knapsack. Then, moving as stealthily as she can, she tiptoes down the hall to the attic room that has become her own, where she gathers her own meager collection of belongings.**

**Next, she heads towards the Mother Superior’s office, down on the ground floor.**

**The door is locked as always, but it’s nothing a hairpin cannot fix. The same goes for the china cabinet that takes up an entire wall inside the tiny office. Rey eyes it for a moment, remembering with fondness the hours spent staring at it while being lectured for her misdeeds.**

**No one ever warned her how painful the passing of childhood would be. Not even Dosmit, with all her cryptic advice, ever really prepared her for that.**

**The pendulum clock on the wall ticks out the seconds as faithfully as ever, and its ticking sounds to Rey like a warning: do not dally.**

**Sighing, she jimmies the pin in the keyhole of the cabinet until she hears a click. The door opens with a tremendous creak, making her wince. She holds up the candle to inspect the wares by its dim halo of light.**

**There is a crystal decanter and a lovely set of sherry glasses that go along with it. A set of silver toothpicks gathered in a beautiful silver jar. Several brass candlesticks that will surely fetch something. The good china tea set; the last time Rey saw that out of the cabinet was the last time Lady Holdo came to visit Saint Padmé’s, nearly two years ago.**

**Rey swallows, pushing away the thoughts of the kindly Baroness. Another victim of the pandemic.**

**In the drawers, she finds a very fine, filigreed set of silverware.**

**She spares no more time for sad memories; someone could chance upon her at any moment. The decanter and sherry glasses, she wraps up in her clothing, using her bloomers and chemise and nightgown. **

**Next is the silver, which she is just beginning to roll up inside the felt lining of the drawer when:**

**“Ahem.”**

**Rey freezes.**

**The sound of tiny feet crossing the office synchronizes with the tick-tock of the clock.**

**Maz appears at her side, looking rumpled as she stares up at Rey, eyes narrowed. Rey cannot remember a time when Mother Maz was ** ** _not _ ** **an old woman—even in her earliest memories, Maz is wizened and bespectacled—but the years have been kind to her. Her dark skin glows with good health, despite the lines around her eyes and mouth. There is still a spring in her step, still spryness in her tiny figure.**

**“This is highly unusual, Miss Wednesday.”**

**“Mother Maz,” she croaks. “I—I can explain.”**

**“Put those things down and have a seat.”**

**The Mother Superior is already moving towards her desk. She procures a set of keys from the pocket of her bathrobe, then unlocks one of the desk drawers. Rey takes a seat across the desk from her, and Maz brings out a bottle filled with an amber liquid, followed by a pair of crystal tumblers.**

**“It’s been… a difficult few days,” says Maz, as she pours two drinks and slides one across the desk.**

**Rey can do no more than nod; she brings the drink to her nose and takes a sniff, then coughs. Whatever the liquid is, its scent burns her nose.**

**“Whiskey. Good for difficult days.” Maz raises her glass in a toast. “To Dosmit, may Saint Padmé keep her.”**

**“To Dosmit.”**

**One sip of the drink has her coughing; the stuff tastes vile and it burns her throat even more than it did her nostrils. But the burn is good, she decides, not a moment after. Soothing, in a way. She takes a bigger sip, then she finishes it, which sets off a genuine coughing fit. Maz leans over the desk and refills her glass.**

**“So you are leaving us,” she says, as she settles back into her seat. “And you are taking our valuables with you.”**

**“I’m sorry!” cries Rey, ashamed at having been caught, at her own ingratitude. “I’ll—I’ll put it all—” **

**“Are you sure you want to be… out there?” Maz cuts in. “The state of the world is very perilous right now. And things don’t look to be turning around any time soon.”**

**Rey nods. “I have to go.”**

**With that, she leans over and rifles through the knapsack until she finds the letter. She hands it to Maz, who reads it silently. When she is finished, her small eyes flit up to Rey, bewildered, then down to the letter again. She passes it back and finishes her own drink, then refills it as well.**

**“Ah,” is all she says.**

**“Did you know?”**

**“I did not. But… Dosmit always kept to herself. There was—when she came to us—well,” Maz breaks off with a sigh. “We all led lives before we entered Saint Padmé’s. Did you know I ran an inn? Wonderful job. I was a top-notch barkeep. And Dosmit…” Maz sighs again, takes a sip, then concludes, “There was much she did not say about who she’d been before.”**

**“She worked as a cook on a ship that sailed around the world. She told me she dressed as a man, and people believed she ** ** _was _ ** **one until the Discovery ruined it for her,” Rey tells her, watching for Maz’s reaction to gauge if this is a surprise.**

**It is. Maz’s forehead wrinkles, her jaw drops. “Well,” she chokes out on a dry laugh. “That does answer a few questions, I suppose, but still… I’ll be damned.”**

**“Mother Maz!”**

**Maz grins. “Oh, hush. It’s fine. It’s only a little curse. I’m sure in the midst of all this,” she sweeps her arm out towards the boarded-up window, past which Rey knows lies the rubble that comprises much of the Omega district, “the Lord can see fit to forgive me.”**

**“I’m sorry,” repeats Rey. She swallows the rest of her drink, coughing less than she did last time. She lifts the silverware for Maz’s appraisal. “I’ll… just… put it back…” **

**“No, no.” Maz halts her with a raised hand. “Take it. Get whatever you can for it.”**

**She frowns at the Mother Superior. “But, I—it’s stealing. I shouldn’t have—”**

**“No it’s not, it’s a gift. From me to you.” Maz pauses, eyeing the toothpicks. Then with a resolved nod, she adds: “A parting gift. Go find your parents if they’re still out there, Henrietta. Go find something better. May the Lord and Saint Padmé keep _you_.”**

**It is as much a dismissal as it is a blessing, so Rey rises from her chair. “Thank you, Mother Maz.”**

**Maz gives her a tired nod, then watches without comment as Rey carefully packs the rest of the valuables in with the crystal. As she shoulders the knapsack, Maz says:**

**“If you don’t ** ** _find _ ** **something better, do an old woman a favor—won’t you?”**

**There is an unusual edge to her voice; it demands Rey’s complete attention.**

**“Of course,” she replies. “Anything.”**

**“****_Make_ ** ** something better,” says Maz, all grit and determination.**

**Rey bows her head in acquiescence despite knowing it is a promise she cannot keep. It is a lie, but surely it is a harmless one.**

**As Maz mentioned, considering what the world has become… one white lie will not offend the Lord.**

**With that, she turns to leave Saint Padmé’s the same way she arrived, all those years ago: silently, in secret, by the lavender light that heralds the dawn.**

* * *

She drowsed, warm and comfortable in his embrace. Kylo was draped against her back, erect cock prodding at her. His deep, snuffling snores told her he wasn’t awake; the intermittent thrusts of his hips hinted at the contents of his dreams.

As for Rey, she felt very tender below the belt. She reached down, examining herself with her fingers, and found herself swollen, slightly sore. Wet, too, but not the viscous, tacky dewiness of slick. Bringing her fingers up above the sheets, she gasped; they gleamed red-brown.

Her bleeds had come in the night; the milk thistle had done its job. There would be no babe.

“Mm,” came his low rumble in her ear, right before he brushed his nose against her gland, sending a shiver down her spine and an errant throb through her cunt.

No. No, it could not be. But when he clutched at her, carefully palming her breasts, so gentle, while charting her throat with soft kisses and pushing his cock against her more purposefully, this simple truth was undeniable:

Her heat had passed, yet her desire for him remained, just as sharp and keen as ever.

She could have screamed with frustration at herself, at her own frailty, her own need.

His fingers smoothed down over her belly, towards the crisp hair above her mound. He began to paw at her, all of her, testing her, waking her up, trying to excite her. It worked. Of course it worked. Damn him, for how well it worked, how quickly she grew wet and began to pant, ever so slightly. But it was obvious, the moment he realized something was amiss, because he froze completely; Rey could not even be certain he was breathing.

Was he disgusted? With his rut passed and the novelty of a first shared heat behind them, would her bleeds do the job for her and send him running for the hills? She waited, her own breath held, watching as he raised his fingers to inspect them. The coppery smell wafted towards her. It didn’t bother her—she’d had years to become accustomed to it—but perhaps it would him?

She hazarded a look back at him. His eyes were hard, his eyebrows pinched together, his mouth a tight line. He glanced at her, then back to his fingers. Not saying a word, he brought his hand back to her sex, and reapplied his efforts.

Rey gasped; it felt good, and she _ wanted _him to touch her. Needed him to. She wasn’t going to stop him, she decided. If he wasn’t going to acknowledge the blood, why should she?

Just one last time.

When he rolled her over, touching her so carefully, staring into her eyes; when he laid himself down atop her, when he eased inside—so full, she would never have this again, that sweet pleasure-pain of letting him in—Rey thought she might cry, but could not allow herself to.

Her throat ached with it, though. 

He didn’t speak. She didn’t either. They simply rocked together, barely parting, Kylo cradled between her thighs, Rey wrapped up in his arms. What good were words, in this moment? What could either of them say that would not hurt the other? It was over. But here they were, doing what lovers did. He stared into her eyes, and she stared back, memorizing each fleck and fold of his irises, the proud lines of his face, memorizing how it felt to be held. 

To be loved.

For a little while longer, she clung to this allowance she’d made.

. . .

“So,” he said some time later, when they’d finally tugged on some clothing and situated themselves at the kitchen table, a shot glass of whiskey sitting untouched before each of them. It was an echo of the first night they spent snowed in together in that rough cabin back in Illinois; she nearly laughed aloud at the memory, which had softened into something almost dear in her mind. 

“Been thinking.”

“Hm.”

She could feel his gaze boring into her face, willing her to look at him, but she denied him that. She stared down at the liquor instead; the late afternoon sun shone through the kitchen’s lone window and lit up her glass, making its content glow golden-amber.

“If you… if you came with me, back to the outpost—”

“No,” she ground out.

“Just hear me out—”

“No!”

“We could burn it down,” he persisted. “We could rebuild—make something better. The First Order, the Resistance—it’s a pointless fight. We could end it.”

“I don’t care,” was the best she could come up with, shrugging. Rey did _ want _to care. She had cared once, very much. But what had caring ever brought her but heartache?

“What _ do _you want, then? To stay here? Way I see it, those are our choices. Stay here or go back.”

The ‘our’ did not escape her notice. He sounded so calm, so certain. When was the last time she had felt either of those things, calm or certain, when he was not the cause? No. She had given too much. Too much, too much. All she gave him now was her willful, sullen silence. After a minute, he tried a new tack.

“There’s nothing for you here, Rey.”

“There’s nothing for me _ there_,” she pointed out.

He growled his frustration at her. “You’re giving up again.”

“Why do you presume to tell me what I’m doing, how I’m feeling?”

“It’s obvious!” His raised voice drew her attention; she stole a peek at him to find he was gesturing to his nose. “Alpha! Or did you forget? You reek of despair, Omega.”

“I think _ you _ should go do whatever you want with _ your _ life,” she said, seething.

He went silent at that.

. . .

Her dismissiveness hurt, but Kylo could not be so easily deterred, not when everything lay on the line. Stridently, after a second’s recovery, he tried again. “If we went back, no harm would come to you. You’d be mi—” he cut himself off mid-word. It would push her too far, he suspected. “You’d be with me.”

She shook her head at him like he was a misbehaving child who had not seen the error of his ways; it was infuriating, that look.

“Fine.” He crossed his arms, meeting her look with an obstinate glower of his own. “Then I’m staying.”

“You’re not—”

“What?” he all but barked. “I’m not what?”

“Welcome.”

She might’ve well as punched him for how badly that hurt. Hadn’t he given her what she needed, what she wanted? Hadn’t he been a good Alpha for her? It was difficult to even articulate himself, with how deep to the bone that one word had cut.

“After… after…” he tried; _ after what we did_, he wanted to say, but his throat felt clogged, his mouth dry. _ What we shared. _

“This was only ever going to be one time.”

“Another favor?” he choked out.

“For us both.”

She seemed so flattened, so infuriatingly lifeless. Meanwhile, Kylo’s hands itched to break something.

Muttering to himself, he groused, “Save my life, let me fuck you, kick me out, some favor…”

Her lips were pressed so tightly together they went pale.

“Rey.” He couldn’t give up. He couldn’t. “I can help you make a home here. A good, comfortable one.” Tentatively, he reached across the table, palm raised upwards, inviting her to place her hand in his.

“You’re not the first to say that, you know,” she snarled. “People think they know me. No one does.”

“But I do.” She shook her head, just as he nodded his. “_I _ do. I could make you happy.”

“You couldn’t,” she shot back. 

That stymied him; his muscles went tense, rigid, on high alert and he sputtered, mouth opening and closing, sound coming out but no words.

All he could muster was, “And why not?”

. . .

He sounded crushed, his face crumpled. A lost little boy giving her sad puppy dog eyes.

_ Murderer_, she reminded herself. _ Executioner. Soldier. Alpha._

Those were not the words that filled her with fear, though. Not anymore.

_ Knotsick. Lovelorn._ That was what scared her. It was probably why he looked and sounded so lost; he was in the thrall of his own hormones. The infatuation would pass, Rey reasoned. Once they’d been apart for a while. And the same would happen for her. This need would pass.

_If you stayed,_ she wanted to tell him, _I would come to love you._ _Need you, even. Need has never brought me anything but pain. _

“You couldn’t,” she repeated instead, voice brittle on her non-answer. “You called me a liar—maybe that's true. But a man who goes by one name to the world and another to his lover is no paragon of honesty.”

Anger. She watched it flare in his curled upper lip, in his narrowed eyes. Good.

“So we are both of us liars, then, _ Henrietta_,” he seethed.

Rey took a deep, bracing breath. “My lies hurt no one but myself. Can you say the same? What has all your playing at being a big bad Alpha cost the world?”

He bowed his head, twisting the shot glass in a slow clockwise circle. “Your lies hurt me, too.”

“Kylo Ren, executioner for the First Order,” she reminded him cruelly. Let it be thorough, this break. Let there be nothing left.

His lips twisted as though he might be about to break into tears, but he did not. “If I fail to bring you back to Snoke,” he said at last, not looking at her, “I must choose exile or death.”

She shook her head, though he was not watching. “I cannot make that choice for you.”

“You already have, then.”

Up until now, she had managed to stay composed, though her emotions were a maelstrom. But she felt anger rise to meet his own at such an accusation. What right had he to put such an onus on her? No one had forced him to join a monastery, or the war, or Snoke and the First Order. Yes, his parents had sent him away, but he was an alphic male; before the Catastrophe, the world had been his for the taking. He could’ve been anything, done anything.

He’d chosen his life; if it led to a violent or dismal end, that was not her fault. Whatever end hers came to was not his, either. They were nothing to each other. They were both of them nobody. But Rey did not want to be nobody together.

So she held her tongue and glared at him.

“There are others to take my place,” he said, mournful. “Once, maybe, I was…” He shook his head before continuing, “He’ll expose me for a son of resistance fighters, a pretender. Burn me in effigy. He’s sired many Alphas—the Alpha who calls herself Phasma is bigger and stronger than I ever was.”

Was this a ploy to garner her sympathy? Rey imagined what such a woman must look like. Truly an Alpha to be avoided. Still, she did not yield.

“I’ll be cast out. Again.” The plaintive note to his voice felt like a manipulation, but studying his face, she saw in it his earnest dread.

Rey understood dread. She bore too much of her own to help him carry his.

And did he really expect her to forfeit her freedom for whatever length of life remained so that he could return to his merry band of murderers? Did he expect her to love him, and allow him to stay, when she had barely enough love left in her for herself?

She inhaled, then exhaled, refusing to avert her gaze, and refusing to speak. For a moment, they stayed like that, locked in a staring contest. He huffed, frustrated, and Rey blinked, but otherwise remained stone-still. 

Finally, he went slack, leaning his elbows on the table. “It’s a hard world to live in alone.”

She kept her head held high, willing herself to be impervious to his pain. “I’m not worried for you. You made it all the way here, didn’t you?”

“I was talking about you,” he said.

Her outrage flared again and this time she could not hold back. “You wanted to see me safely to Jakku? You have. You wanted to see me through my heat? You have. Whatever debt you think you owed to me, you have repaid. Whatever I owed you, surely, I have repaid too.”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I’m not going with you and you’re _ not _staying with me,” she declared.

_Murderer. Tyrant._ _Knotsick. Alpha._ Like a prayer, she repeated those words in her mind, to stave off his sad, hungry eyes.

“Then I’m a dead man.”

“We’re all dead, _ Kylo_, or hadn’t you noticed?” She wielded his chosen name like a saber. “The whole world is dead, we’re just waiting for the record to run out. There’s nothing _ left_.”

The smile he offered her was sad, crooked. “You don’t believe in second chances? That something—someone—could come back for us? For you?”

“No,” she parried. “I’m done with all that.”

Maz’s words returned to her—the vow the Mother Superior had asked her to make before she left. _ Make something better. _ She stifled the memory. It could not be kept; she’d known that then and she knew it now.

There was not enough of her left. There was less than nothing. An empty husk, a ghost woman.

Yet he persisted. “Don’t you believe in me?”

“I’ve let you closer than I ever let any man,” she demurred. “Yet I feel I hardly know you.”

Oh, that struck home. She could see it; his nostrils flared, and he sucked in a sharp breath.

“_This _ is close?” he jeered, his deep voice breaking on the last word. “I feel I hardly know _ you_. I love you, Rey, what little of yourself you’ve given me, but you wouldn't even let me _ near _you until you were going into heat.”

He’d buried his grand declaration in a diatribe, but the words rang in her ears all the same. _ I love you. _

“So you see,” she said, rattled, gesturing angrily to herself, then to him. “It would never work. What you need, I cannot give you.”

“I didn’t—I don’t need—I never asked—” He shook his head.

“Neither did I.” 

His expression grew determined as he stood and leaned forward over the table, bringing his face close to hers. “You smell like mine,” he told her. “You’ve always smelled like mine, like you belong to me. From the moment I caught your scent—”

“Don’t.”

It had to be said; she admired how long he’d managed to go without bringing their biology into the argument. But there it was, inescapable: an appeal to some mythic omegan nature, some need to belong… 

_ Well bugger that, _ thought Rey. All she had ever wanted was to belong. And all it had ever brought her was heartache. She had not truly belonged to Dosmit. Dosmit, who’d loved her and lied to her. She had not belonged to the other Omegas of Saint Padmé’s. She could not belong to her parents. She had no more belonged to the world that had vanished than she did this dead world left in its wake.

How dare he bring up belonging, use it against her?

“You don’t feel this?” he asked, snatching her hand and placing it on his chest, over his racing heart. He craned his neck, scenting her. “I think you do.”

“Get out,” she snarled. Wresting herself free, she shot up from her stool and backed away from the table, then pointed to the front door. “Get out.”

He flung his arms out in exasperation. “Again with this?”

“I don’t want you here. I don’t want _ anything_, least of all you!” The next words were difficult to speak aloud when he was staring at her like a kicked dog, but she forced them out between clenched teeth: “I don’t want a murderer. A snake.”

Kylo’s anger boiled over; with a wild howl, he turned and kicked his stool, sending it flying against the kitchen wall. It splintered into pieces on impact, then tumbled to the floor.

“Your murderer,” he growled, turning back to her. “_Your _ snake.”

His outburst had shaken her deeply. Her voice wobbled on the next word, but she forced them out anyway:

“Go.”

They stood there, suspended. He glared at her and she glared back. His expression softened, and he passed around the table, then reached for her, to cup her waist in his palms, as he had three days ago. How this whole thing had started, the first rule broken.

Rey had made so many mistakes; she saw that now. Too many, and none could be undone. But she could do better, maybe. She could stay here in Jakku, she could go to sleep for a while and think, really _ think_, about what she was going to do next. She did not need him, she did not need anyone, she never had. To need someone was to invite pain unto oneself; she had had her fill of pain already. So she did not relent. He took another step forward, she took one back.

“Rey,” he said, hoarse. “Henrietta. Omega. My love. We could—”

_ “Go!_”

This time her voice did not shake. The word was a hammer against the head of a nail. It was a death knell ringing out in the quiet of the kitchen. It was as final as the slamming of a door.

He lowered his eyes. It was a clear admission of defeat. His face smoothed into something stoic. Inscrutable. A mask. He swallowed hard, the sound echoing in the small space, then stomped off into the bedroom before returning a minute later fully dressed, his coat stolen back and the brim of his pork pie hat pulled low.

As he headed for the door, he tipped it once in her direction without meeting her gaze or faltering in his steps.

He did not pause. He did not speak. He did not close the door behind him.

Rey watched his broad form lumber through it. She watched him cross the porch and stomp down the stairs. She watched him march out onto the sunbaked road and disappear into the shadowy saloon.

Not once did he look back at her.

And that, she told herself, again and again, swallowing deep gulps of air, was exactly how she wanted it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-ecological-apocalypse/)?
> 
> I have _appallingly_ few notes this time around. So, uh, here is an olde timey [china cabinet](https://www.harpgallery.com/photos/cd/cab81316ok.jpg).
> 
> **Rey in this chapter:**
> 
> **Kylo in this chapter:**
> 
> Don't worry. All will be well. It's always darkest before the dawn and all that. Thank you for reading! 💓


	16. We were grave lovers. Love is past That had his sweet hours many a one;

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before you read on, please click on this [link](https://twitter.com/HouseOfFinches/status/1187564222697345024) to take a look at the lovely drawing House of Finches made of Rey and Ben's confrontation. It's so perfect, I keep going back to stare at it. Thank you again, HoF! 😭💗

**There’s a reason the windows of Saint Padmé’s have been boarded for months now, the doors locked and barred, secret arms stowed in strategic locations around the old rectory, the nuns and the monks all brushing up on their shooting skills, the ones who’ve never shot a gun in their lives being taught by those who have.**

**Outside the walls of the home is madness; London is a waking nightmare.**

**The unusually clear weather—a brief respite that graced the city while Rey buried Dosmit—is gone. In its stead resumes what has become the new norm, a mixture of fog and smoke from the citywide fires. Rey’s knitted scarf offers little protection and makes her sweat in the humid spring day, but it’s all she has, so she wraps it tight around her face, hitches her pack up on her shoulders, and heads out towards the train station on foot.**

**She’ll exchange what she needs to find the money for a ticket to Liverpool, she figures. She’ll be there in no time; she’s sure of it.**

**The bombing begins not long after she sets out. Rey has experienced many bombings, long days and nights filled with terror and pricked ears and trembling hands, but never has she been outside, been exposed, when the aeroplanes swarmed the city and the ground shook with their weapons.**

**What chaos it sows. Screaming from all corners, the ear-splitting whine of air-raid sirens. An errant thought comes to her while she huddles down against a brick wall in an alley, eyes squeezed shut, heart thundering nearly as loud as the bombs and the planes and the screams: who, she wonders, is operating the sirens? There is no one for her to ask.**

**“Dear St. Padmé, we are all pilgrims,” she prays under her breath, “We came from God and we are going to Him. He who created us will welcome us at journey's end. Protect me until I am safely home. Help me in all my needs and difficulties.”**

**Again and again she utters the prayer, a low droning incantation—not loud enough to blot out the madness, but loud enough so that she can hear it and focus her thoughts on the forming of the words. Not until the buzzing roar of the aeroplanes has grown faint, then disappeared, and many minutes have passed since the last rumbling explosion, does she stop.**

**When she opens her eyes, it is immediately clear to Rey that the dropped bombs were not for the destruction of buildings alone. The air has become thicker, but it’s the sickly color of pea soup, swirling and gaseous.**

**This is not to say that there were not bombs meant for buildings as well. She loses count of how many are on fire as she forces herself up out of her huddle and back into the street, resuming her journey towards the train station.**

**Fire. Fire everywhere, horrible heat and smoke, and no firemen to put it out, nothing but desperate people with paltry buckets of water.**

**So much has been reduced to rubble.**

**And the sickly green fog is not lifting. Its smell is sour and fetid and invades her senses no matter how she tries to protect her lungs from whatever it is. It clings to the ground, never dissipating, as though it is heavier than air; gusts of smoke-filled wind stir it up into swirls. Above, the sky is clear of the planes, but dark clouds hang low, threatening to smother the city, or so it feels.**

**She can hardly see more than a few paces ahead. But she fights back her dread and gropes her way through this new, malevolent fog, checking street signs as she goes. Never before has she been this far from the Omega district. She knows the names only by the hand-drawn map she clutches, recognizes nothing but the dazed look of prolonged agony in the faces of those she passes.**

**Some run by her, howling. Some stumble along, as bewildered as she is. Some ** ** _she _ ** **passes—motionless bodies lying in the street, staring up at the sky with unblinking eyes, frozen in terror and awe. A few still bustle with purpose, trying to save a city that is beyond saving.**

**All appear out of the thick fog like apparitions, then disappear back into it as they move away.**

**Rey walks quickly, eager to put London behind her. The devastation grows worse. Her ears ring, but besides that, she notices a strange hush has fallen; in her panicked state, she imagines that the fog has blunted any sound that might attempt to travel through the streets. She keeps going, seeing less and less stragglers, until many minutes pass without encountering another soul. There is still fire, still fog and still ruin, but there does not seem to be anyone left to mourn this part of London.**

**It is unsettling, the emptiness. Broken windows stare down at her. The sky is gone completely, lost to the green fog and the black smoke.**

**And then someone seizes her.**

**Alphic scent drowns her, so thick and so acrid she coughs, and strong arms pull her against a hulking body. She is lifted off her feet; the Alpha staggers backwards, carrying her towards an empty brick house nearby. Its door is open, the house within is dark; that much she can spy through the fog.**

**Panic. A cold sweat, the kicking of her heart against her ribs. And with it, the kind of terror that comes from the certainty of doom, a frisson of ice-cold fire running along every single nerve in the body, her stomach upending itself in violent protest.**

**The Alpha is groping her roughly. She screams, though it is muffled through the scarf. A big hand clamps onto her mouth. With every ounce of energy and force she can muster, Rey thrashes against her captor. She must not enter that house. She must not go through that dark doorway. **

**She must not.**

**Her frenzied tossing of her head frees her from his hand and the scarf. She screams again, loud as she can.**

**No one comes.**

**The Alpha does not speak. She fights, flailing, but he is making progress; they are very nearly to the threshold. She screams a final time and the big hand tries to cover her mouth again, so she bites down until her mouth fills with bitter, coppery blood and she feels teeth hit bone.**

**Hissing and cursing, the Alpha drops her. From the fog to her left, two more emerge. Both look half-crazed; heads tilted, they sniff the air. The first Alpha growls at them. They growl back.**

**Rey does not wait, she does not stop to think.**

**She runs.**

**She runs and she runs. Every time she glances back, the Alphas are there, their mad eyes burning with ravenous fury. The one with the bitten hand snarls out a guttural threat. Though she is fast, they are gaining on her.**

**She takes two lefts then stumbles down a back alley. At the sight of a commode behind someone’s burning house, she sobs in relief, hazards one more look behind her—the Alphas have not yet turned the corner—and ducks inside.**

**It reeks. But she stays put. She hears the Alphas run by, hears them double back, roaring their displeasure, but she remains curled up atop the toilet seat, though the horrid stench causes her to be ill twice.**

**That stench saves her life, obscuring her own scent from her predators.**

**It might be ten minutes, it might be two hours before she emerges. Rey is so scared that all concept of time leaves her. But when she finally does come out, she is wilted from the heat and the suffocating fog and her own nausea.**

**The Alphas, thank Padmé, are nowhere to be seen.**

**On shaky legs, she sets out once more towards the train station. Only now, when she hears someone coming—regardless of the speed at which they’re moving, or their scent, or their bearing—she hides. **

**It is a laborious, slow-going journey.**

**And when she reaches the station at last, she finds that the trains are no longer running; there are not enough people left to demand passage, nor are there enough left to operate them.**

**So she’ll walk the rails then, following the signs to Liverpool.**

**. . .**

**It takes her a couple of weeks.**

**Along the way, she meets others. Not many, not often, but a few. Mostly Betas and Omegas, fleeing the cities as she is; none are headed to Liverpool, as the rumors about the northwestern port city assert it is just as dangerous if not more so than London.**

**These fellow escapees and runaways share whatever news they can of wherever they’ve come from, and she does the same.**

**It is after Rey has been invited to sit around the campfire of two such runaways one evening, during her second week of walking, that she learns of the weapon they call ‘alphic gas.’**

**“Developed in some laboratory, that’s what we been hearing,” explains the diminutive Beta seamstress as she ladles out some rabbit stew for Rey. “A toxin.”**

**“Formulated to trigger an unending alphic—rut,” adds her omegan husband, a kindly old typesetter. He blushes furiously at the word ‘rut’, but presses on: “Not unlike the Lover’s Death—it’ll kill ‘em all eventually, but slower. Much slower. They’re dropping it on the cities. Doomsday, some are sayin’.”**

**She thinks of the Alpha who grabbed her in London, the others who approached, drawn by her cries and perhaps by the spike of terrified omegan pheromones in the deadened air, and a shiver runs through her, like a rivulet of ice water rolling down her spine.**

**The what-might-have-beens hound her throughout the night, keeping her awake. She is glad for the couple’s company, even if they are journeying in opposite directions and will have to part ways in the morning.**

**After that, sleep eludes her. She dozes at the height of the day, mostly, but even then it is a light, restless nap.**

**The country air is cleaner than that of the cities. That spring is rainy, which is terrible, but it makes the countryside lush with greenery, which is miraculous. She is grateful for small things: berries growing on the bushes, a soft patch of grass, the cool clear water trickling through the creeks. Rey has never been out of London, has never breathed air that was not choked with fumes nor experienced the quiet splendor of a pastoral sunset. Though each step is taken in dread, and in sorrow, there is room in her heart for these tiny mercies.**

**Not much room. But a little.**

**As she continues on, she spends her nights in the depots and stations of small villages, and on protected riverbanks, and under the bristling branches of shrubby yew trees. She raids the grocers of the villages when she becomes so crazed with hunger and desperate that her fear of Alphas is overridden; as a result, twice she is besieged by berserker, rut-maddened brutes. Twice she outruns them, too, thank Padmé. But her distrust of strangers deepens. She learns to meet any unfamiliar situation with extreme caution.**

**In Takodana, a village situated somewhere in the Midlands, she finds shelter with a fiery old Beta woman, a former schoolteacher who has taken over an abandoned farm. Rey is slow to trust the woman, and the woman her. But after a couple days’ rest in the woman’s barn, she trusts her enough to ask for help in surviving the wilderness. The woman teaches her about cover scents—and shows her how to brew a decoction—then exchanges a fork and knife from Rey’s silverware for an 1892 Winchester rifle. She shows her the basics of hunting game and fowl without asking for recompense. A kindness; one of a few visited upon Rey during her trek.**

**From then on, it is by hunting that she feeds herself. This is how she survives. She hardly ever enters any settlement, any outpost, any place where Alphas might dwell. She keeps to the rolling hills and farmland, scavenging and hunting what she needs. In the distance, she sees the lonely spires of cathedrals, the silent chimneys of factories, equally abandoned in the aftermath. The destruction of the Catastrophe is like a cicatrix of scars upon the land. The mouths of once-busy coal and iron mines gape open, dark and threatening, hiding dangers in their gullets.**

**At last, she makes it to Liverpool—exhausted, each step lurching and faltering, her feet aching and blistered, her skirts torn and muddied beyond repair, the stench of her own fear and unwashed body preceding her.**

**But she makes it.**

**. . .**

**Liverpool is not as dangerous as the rumors have made it out to be.**

**This is not to say that it is safe. But Rey has learned much in her weeks of walking. She has become savvier in the ways of the new world and she slinks around corners with care, applies and re-applies her decoction over her glands, approaches no one, meets no eyes and answers no questions.**

**Thus she finds her way to the docks, lined by old wooden warehouses, smelling of briny sea water and fish. There she attempts to beg passage on the handful of operating ships. They are all creaking wooden schooners, in various states of disrepair, and they appear to be manned mostly by piratey-looking rapscallions. It is no time to be picky, though, so she applies herself to the captain of each ship, offering all of her finery for passage.**

**The bastards all refuse her. Their barked laughter accompanies their harsh rejections; what Rey has in her possession is, according to them, not nearly enough to counter the cost of feeding an extra mouth or the prospect of misfortune a woman on board might invite.**

**And then she tries Captain Han Solo, of the ** ** _Millennium Falcon_****. **

**He alone eyes her offerings, then her desperate expression, and then the offerings again. He alone wavers, indecisive, then tells her to wait as he ambles off to engage his first man, a tall hirsute fellow, in a quiet, clandestine debate. He alone returns to her, standing there on the main deck of his ship, feeling out of place and awkward and preemptively disheartened—he is her last resort, the last ship in the port, and if he refuses her, all of this has been for naught—and tells her, with a roguish smirk:**

**“Give me the candlesticks, and take the rest to the marketplace they’ve set up over in that far warehouse. Barter for what you’ll need when we reach Halifax.”**

****

**“Thank you,” she all but weeps. “Thank you, Captain Solo.”**

**“Han,” he corrects, rubbing the back of his neck. “Just… Han.”**

**“Thank you, Han.”**

**He waves a hand at her. “Yeah, yeah. Get back to the ship by dawn—we set sail at first light. And don’t expect special treatment… long as you’re with us, you’ll be expected to work.”**

**This is how she finds herself leaving behind everything she has ever known, standing aboard a smuggler’s old wooden schooner, headed west across the Atlantic Ocean. By the diffuse light of a cloudy spring morning, she leans on the balustrade of the Falcon’s forecastle deck, looking out at the sea. Han stands beside her. He is a Beta; she knows because he smells of nothing but salt.**

**“What’s in Halifax?” he asks, as he rolls himself a cigarette.**

**“Nothing,” she answers, not looking at him.**

**“No family?”**

**“They’re… they’re waiting for me,” she says carefully. “But not in Halifax. In Texas.”**

**He lets out a long whistle. “Quite a journey ahead of you.”**

**“I can manage it. I—I have to.”**

**She glances at him. There’s something wistful in the downturn of his mouth, the glint of the dim dawn in his green eyes.**

**“Do ** ** _you _ ** **have a family?” she asks.**

**He nods. “Wife and a kid.”**

**“Where are they?”**

**His grimace seems to be an answer all its own, and she resumes her survey of the sea, returning his courtesy of not pushing too hard on old wounds. But he does speak, after a time.**

**“Wife’s back home, in Illinois,” he mutters, gruff voice gone even rougher. Strangled, almost. “Doing what she can for people, like I am. The kid…”**

**The pause draws on and on, long enough that she turns again to look at him. Han’s eyes are also on the overcast horizon; his lips are trembling. He coughs, as if to repulse the emotion from his chest, then grunts, “He’s gone. We… we failed him. We lost him.”**

**An old memory: sitting on that faded davenport, a picture book in her lap, asking Dosmit about her family, one of dozens of times she pestered the nun for details of the life she led before she took her vows. Henrietta was nine, maybe. Or ten. Young.**

**So very young.**

** _“My family’s gone,” Dosmit had told her, “They were all Alphas but me. The Discovery… I lost them to it. They lost each other.”_ **

** _“Can’t you find them?” she’d wondered. “I can help. We can put an advertisement in the newspaper!”_ **

** _“I wish it were that simple, Henrietta.”_ **

** _She’d frowned, and Dosmit had stroked her hair soothingly, as she sometimes did. “They’re lost in a way that can’t be undone, I fear. But that’s alright. You know why?”_ **

** _Little Henrietta had not known. She’d shaken her head in response._ **

** _“It’s alright, ‘cause you’re my family now.”_ **

**A sob breaks free before Rey can stifle it. Then another. Tears, hot and bitter, well up and spill over, down her cheeks. Their taste is salty on her lips. Her chest heaves, great hiccuping sobs overtaking her.**

**It is a humiliation to cry like this, in front of a virtual stranger. She cannot meet Han’s eyes. He does his best, awkwardly patting her shoulder, although she can tell he is ill at ease.**

**“Hey, hey… it’ll… hey, c’mon Rey,” he tries. “It’ll be okay.”**

**Weeping, she stammers, “Y-yes.” Even to her own ears, it sounds unconvincing.**

**He sighs. Glances down at his cigarette, on which the ash has grown long. He taps it, then takes a puff. Pulls another from his peacoat and lights it. Holds it out to Rey.**

**“Have a smoke, kid. Good for the nerves.”**

**When she takes it with trembling fingers, vision still blurred by tears, he sends her a tight, pained smile.**

**She puts her lips around the cigarette and drags in a deep breath of the smoke, savoring the taste of tar on her tongue. It isn’t pleasant, but pleasant isn’t what she needs right now.**

**“Okay?”**

**Han is watching her, head tilted, brow furrowed. After a few moments, Rey manages a shaky nod. “Okay.”**

**The sigh he issues, she can tell, is one of relief. His hand remains resting on her shoulder, a comforting anchor. Together, they stay that way, standing silently side by side, sharing their unspoken sorrow, watching the sea writhe and froth before them.**

* * *

For a little while, he hung around. He moved into one of the rooms above the saloon; she could see his candlelight in the window at night. She could see the silhouette of his broad form pacing, too, through the drawn shades.

Back and forth. Back and forth.

A new tradition formed: at dusk, he would emerge from the swinging saloon doors and lean against the porch’s corner column, smoking a cigarette she supposed he’d found in the general store, darting jealous glances at her home from under the brim of his hat.

Rey stayed inside.

He began to avail himself of the alcohol reserve.

In the middle of the night, she would be awakened by the sound of him singing. Wartime ditties, sometimes, but mostly, old nursery rhymes. He’d belt them out in his wonderfully velvety baritone, but his voice often broke in the way of all sad, drunken serenades. Sometimes she could hear him dissolve into tears. She wondered where he was, that she could hear him so clearly. Was he on her front porch? It was natural to suppose so, as she awoke many mornings to find gifts awaiting her by the front door.

Tins of food, bouquets of wildflowers, women’s garments. A buck, once, already skinned and gutted and arranged neatly on an oilskin tarp. Had they come from nearby, or had he ranged far and wide to find them? Thought she might be tempted to ask, she did not. She could not relent now, not after all that had been said. Not when she was nobody, from nowhere, with nothing to give him in return.

So she let the tins sit in the winter sun, let the flowers wilt and die, let the clothes blow away, left the deer to the flies and maggots. She touched none of it, refused all of it. Did not even look at it past her initial inspection through the front window.

Cold. The prairie winter was not harsh, though the nights were long and the wind whistled high through the chinks in the walls, yet even so, Rey felt chilled to the bone all the time. This prolonged rejection of Kylo’s sad attempts to apologize or woo her felt like the coldest thing she had ever done. It felt cruel, and it felt senseless, considering each gift he offered was something she wanted or needed.

But he’d had her all wrong from the start to think that she could ever be his.

There would be no giving in. If she did so now, she would betray everything Dosmit had ever tried to teach her, wouldn’t she? She was nobody’s Omega. Not now, not ever. 

She _ would _ not need him. She could not. One heat did not make them bonded.

The world was over, didn’t he understand?

What Rey wanted more than anything was surprising to her: she wanted to be alone with her sadness and her anger and her despair. She didn’t want any more of his need, his hunger. There was barely enough of herself to keep _ herself _sustained; she could not provide of herself for him, too.

Nine days after their argument, the gifts stopped. The singing, too. She peeked out one night, her breath fogging up the window, and found all to be calm, and silent, and dark. Then, at least, she ventured back outside, onto the porch. She shivered from the chill in the air but did not retreat. And though she stared for many long minutes at the windows over the empty saloon, waiting, she saw not a single sign of life. Persuading herself he was merely asleep, that he’d drunk himself into a day-long stupor, she hurried back inside.

But finally, eleven days after their argument, she bit the bullet and forced herself out of the house. Upon entering the saloon, she went right for the rickety stairs, then pushed open the door of the room that must belong to him. There were empty liquor bottles and tins littering the nightstand, the desk, the floor. An unmade cot was pushed against one wall. The shade was still drawn over the two windows. His stupid bear coat was hanging from a hook on the wall, but the other, rougher version, the cloak, was nowhere to be seen.

The one left behind, much like the room, reeked of alphic misery and anger.

But there was no Kylo.

He was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2817/2817-h/2817-h.htm#chap30)?
> 
> I did not come up with the prayer Rey repeats to herself in this flashback; I borrowed from [this one](https://www.catholic.org/prayers/prayer.php?p=152), meant for [Saint Anthony, Guide of Pilgrims](https://www.santantonio.org/en/content/walk-saint-anthony).
> 
> Some helpful schooner [anatomy](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/fd/2a/a8/fd2aa8c6750d2553ac82337cfc1b79b2.png).
> 
> The [Wikipedia page for 'Western saloon'](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_saloon) is chock full of fascinating pictures and interesting historical tidbits but in particular, I was inspired by these exterior photos of [a saloon in Fort Worth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_saloon#/media/File:FortWorthTX_Stockyards_Saloon.jpg) and [one in El Dorado](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_saloon#/media/File:ArcadeSaloon-EldoraColorado-1898-DPL.jpg) and this interior shot from [one in Black Hawk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_saloon#/media/File:1897_Saloon_Blackhawk.jpg).
> 
> A map of [industrialization in Britain in the late 1800's](https://previews.agefotostock.com/previewimage/medibigoff/198de4214ab1437c3503d57aa13ff543/hez-2625316.jpg).
> 
> The distance [Rey walks](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/London,+UK/Liverpool,+UK/@52.4571408,-3.8177882,7z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x47d8a00baf21de75:0x52963a5addd52a99!2m2!1d-0.1277583!2d51.5073509!1m5!1m1!1s0x487adf8a647060b7:0x42dc046f3f176e01!2m2!1d-2.9915726!2d53.4083714!3e3) before she even leaves England! No wonder she's tired, eh? If you switch to the 'walking' option, it'll tell you it's [about 196 miles or 65 hours](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/London,+UK/Liverpool,+UK/@52.4525586,-2.6924605,8z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x47d8a00baf21de75:0x52963a5addd52a99!2m2!1d-0.1277583!2d51.5073509!1m5!1m1!1s0x487adf8a647060b7:0x42dc046f3f176e01!2m2!1d-2.9915726!2d53.4083714!3e2). I do not know how accurate this would be in practice. Y'know what they say about the map not being the terrain.
> 
> Also, I am always grateful to my beta reader [Kat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryminded/pseuds/delia-pavorum) who is not only an amazing writer in her own right but who does so much to make these chapters coherent, but I am also hugely grateful to [Sophie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sciosophia/pseuds/sciosophia) who helped me so much with writing the journey through England in this chapter's flashback. Thank you again friends! 
> 
> And otherwise, that's all from me! Thank you for reading! 💖


	17. but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done,

**Benjamin Beckett Solo is eight years old, and he is playing in his attic with the governess.**

**His mother is away for the weekend at a convention put together by the Society of Alphic Gentlewomen of Illinois, where she is attempting to promote her agenda of repealing the new designationist legislature, though Ben is not aware that this is her reason for leaving him alone with only the housestaff and his caregiver.**

**He has not yet reached the age where he resents his mother for her frequent absences throughout his childhood.**

**He will, soon.**

**Some of the alphic women with whom Leia Solo née Skywalker rubs elbows have influence, as the wives of high-ranking alphic statesmen or, in the case of a few trailblazers, as leaders of their communities in their own right. All Leia has told him is that she leaves him so she can go fight for a peaceful world where everyone is equal, everyone is happy.**

**This makes no sense to him. He is so young, and every Beta who works in his house smiles at him indulgently as he goes about his life, including his succession of Beta governesses. Everyone is happy. Aren’t they?**

**He is playing gladiator with this one, up in the attic. He has swords made from scrap wood painted silver, and wears a helmet he has stolen from the knight’s suit of armor that stands in the opulent library at the back of the house.**

**Hacking and slashing, he advances on her. She laughs nervously, doing her best to parry his blows.**

**“Fight! Fight me, you coward!” **

**His teeth are bared, but the squeak of his little boy voice undercuts the ferocity of his demands. In his mind, they are standing upon the sands of the Colosseum, locked in a battle to the death, commanded to fight by the emperor, who sits in his shaded box and watches them with boredom. He can almost hear the roaring crowd, feel the heat of the mediterranean sun beating down on him.**

**“Now, now, Benjamin,” urges the governess, with another nervous laugh. This one doesn’t like these war games, always acts bewildered when Ben shoves a sword in her hand and demands that she defend herself.**

**The sound of footsteps on the creaky attic stairs calls her attention away from him for a moment, and she lowers her guard; he takes the opportunity to advance, shoving the blunt end of his sword into her apron.**

**“Ouch!”**

**“A-ha! I got you—you’re ** ** _dead_****!”**

**“Hey, kid.”**

**Ben turns, sliding up the helmet’s visor so he can locate the source of the gruff voice. There, at the top of the stairs, is his father, who he has not seen in months.**

**“Dad!” he cries, forgetting the sword and gladiatorial combat. He runs gleefully into his father’s open arms, embracing the man, inhaling the faint hint of sea and sweat.**

**“Captain Solo, how good it is to see you,” says the governess politely. “We were just… young Benjamin has so much energy these days…”**

**“Got a meeting with Calrissian in Bespin tomorrow, just passing through,” Han tells her. Benjamin can barely hear through the old metal helmet. Holding him by the shoulders, Han pulls Ben away from him so he can meet his son’s eyes. “What’re you torturing old Roz for, huh kid?”**

**“What?” he asks.**

**“Take this thing off.”**

**The helmet rises up for a moment, blinding him, and then he is free of it. Ben is sweaty from his exertions in the stuffy, windowless room. Gently, Han brushes the dark hair away from his face.**

**“What’ve we told you about fighting your governess, Ben?”**

**“We were gladiators!” he whines.**

**Han shots the governess a tight smile, and the one she sends back is equally strained.**

**“Say, Roz,” he says, “Why don’t you take the rest of the day? I can watch him.”**

**“Sir, are you—”**

**He waves a hand at her. “Go on, go. Us fellas will be fine for one night.”**

**The governess offers no more protest; she gives a grateful nod and clatters back down the stairs, disappearing before Han can change his mind.**

**“You hungry?” he asks Ben.**

**Awestruck at the sight of his father, overcome with joy at the man being home and choosing to spend the entire evening with him, Ben is struck speechless. He gives a shake of his head.**

**Han huffs out a dry laugh. “Yeah, me neither. Say, kid, you… you really need to quit it with that gladiator thing.”**

**“Sorry,” Ben says, cringing under his father’s scrutiny.**

**“S’okay. Just… you play a little rough, Ben.”**

**Ben can hear in that mild rebuke the echoes of the arguments his parents have had countless times behind closed doors, whenever they happen to both be home at the same time.**

** _“He’s aggressive, Leia!”_ **

** _“He’s an Alpha! He’ll learn to control himself. These things take time.”_ **

** _“Yeah, well, while these things are taking time, we can’t keep a decent governess or nanny around, and none of the neighborhood kids want to play with him.”_ **

** _“He’s just a child, Han!”_ **

** _“He’s a bull in a china shop!”_ **

** _“And you weren’t?”_ **

** _“What if he doesn’t, huh? What if he never grows out of this? What if he becomes… an _ ** **Alpha ** ** _kind of Alpha?”_ **

** _“We’ll… figure it out. Luke has offered to help.”_ **

**His father is watching him now with a worried expression, waiting for his response. Ben casts his gaze down at his feet and shrugs. Even at this age, his alphic nose is clogged with the acrid stink of his own shame.**

**A heavy sigh. It resonates in the airless room. “S’alright. Hey, Ben—buck up, kiddo. Got you something.”**

**Han’s hand appears under his downturned face. In his palm sits a pair of golden dice.**

**“Already have dice,” he mutters sullenly, but he cannot keep his eyes off them.**

**“Ah, go on. Give ‘em a toss.”**

**He takes them, enjoying how warm they are from his father’s hand, their smooth sides, gilded and indented with dots for numbers. When he tosses them, their weight brings them to a quick stop.**

**“Snake eyes,” says Han, with a rakish grin. “You know how to play craps, Ben?”**

**Shyly, he gives another shake of his head.**

**Han laughs. “C’mon. I’ll lend you some pennies to start out with. You’ll catch on quick—it’s a cinch.”**

**Thus they move down to the parlor, where the warm spring air drifts in through the windows. Outside, Ben can hear the shrieking laughter of children playing, but for once, he does not mind being apart from them. His father is home, and he is teaching Ben to gamble.**

**Ben loves the game, loves the risks of each roll, loves the reward, love how his father relaxes over the course of a few games, pours himself a drink, begins to laugh at his son’s enthusiasm.**

**This is a new era in his life, or so he thinks. The light fades outside while they play on and a maid comes through to ignite the gas lamps. They stop long enough to cobble together a couple roast beef sandwiches and listen to his favorite radio play, then they resume their game. His father will be around more, Ben thinks, as he rolls the dice. His father will teach him things. They will have fun together. Perhaps they will go fishing or hunting, like the Alphas in the story books he reads.**

**When Han finally tucks him into bed that night, he falls asleep quickly, head and heart full of adventures the two of them are going to have.**

**By morning, Han is gone.**

**“Off on his next great adventure,” says Roz in response to his plaintive queries, as the two of them eat their hard-boiled eggs and porridge in a dining room far too grand for just two people. “He’ll be back soon enough, I’m sure.”**

**Not long after that, he sneaks out of the house one afternoon to play gladiator in the paddock out behind the stables. He slaps the hindquarters of his father’s mare so hard that she bolts, jumping the fence and nearly trampling the butler’s son to death. The boy requires eighteen stitches and a cast on his right arm.**

**In the days that follow, his mother exchanges many clandestine telegram messages and stares at him with hard, sad eyes.**

**A week later, he is sent to live at the Saint Benoît’s, the monastery where his Uncle Luke has taken his vows.**

**He will not see Han for many years. When they finally meet again, it will be in anger and in strife. There will be arguments. There will be things said that can never be unsaid, harsh things, terrible things. **

**And there will be no mention of the final afternoon they spent as father and son, gambling and laughing late into the warm spring evening.**

  


* * *

  


It was as simple as backtracking north, following the rails the way they’d come. Kylo supposed he could’ve gone by road instead, or up the Mississippi, but for whatever reason, he wanted to relive the journey he’d taken with Rey. Not alongside her—a liberty she hadn’t allowed—but a hundred paces at her heels, watching the back of her head, wondering what thoughts were running through it.

He missed her the moment he walked out of her house, and that missing became like an abscess within him. A wound he could not heal himself, which she might’ve, if she hadn’t gone back to pretending he didn’t exist.

After everything.

There was time lost in the week or so that followed, days spent wallowing with a bottle of whiskey inside the saloon, hating her and loving her in the same breath.

Finally, it was too much.

So it was northwards that he went. Back home, sobering up in more ways than one along the journey. 

Home, a place he had been gone from for so long. 

Home, where he did not know what awaited him.

But not to Snoke. That bridge, he knew, would have to be burned.

. . .

He did not avoid the cities along the way, as Rey had, which meant he was better fed and better stocked. It also meant, however, that he ran into trouble with more feral Alphas than he supposed she ever had.

More than a few ambushed him. In Texarkana, in Little Rock, in Cairo, they found him, and he fought them off. He acquired more arms and ammunition; enough to put down those Alphas who could not be beaten back. Though the alphic gas of wartime had dissipated many years ago, the Alphas who had survived its effects remain addled permanently. There was a grasping hunger in their wildness, in their viciousness. Each time he looked into their eyes, he saw madness. Infinite madness. Never again, he suspected, would they be sane.

_ Who had they been before? _

He could imagine how Rey must have seen them: a threatening horde of monstrous beings, coming to rip her apart. She wasn’t wrong, either.

But he saw the men and women they once were.

How easily he might’ve been one of them.

How maybe he was anyway.

Though he did not relish the task, Kylo killed them when he had to; there was no other choice if he wanted to survive.

And oddly enough, he discovered—in moments of near-death, when he was staving off Alphas or dealing with the aftermath of misfortune, as with the tumble he took off a bluff in northern Arkansas—that he _ did _want to survive.

Even if it meant surviving alone.

. . .

The weather reverted back to a more wintry clime. First, frost once again laced the land. Then, battering, blinding snowstorm after snowstorm began to slow his progress. Hail pelted his face. Ice clung to the patchy beard he attempted to grow for warmth, and the long tendrils of his unkempt hair. Yet he went on, and eventually, he reached Missouri. The journey was made more difficult by the elements than it had been; but then, moving away from winter was always easier than returning to it.

It was harrowing, at times. He nearly lost a few toes to frostbite. But he kept going. 

Towards Illinois. 

Towards home, whatever that meant.

. . .

The Mississippi remained frozen solid, so he crossed it and found himself ambivalent to be back. Up he climbed anyway, back into the Shawnee forests, marching through thigh-high snowdrifts. By the time he came to a halt on the snowy bank of Naberrie Creek, the Hollow in the Rock looming like a gaping maw on the other side, he reckoned it must be well on towards February or March. Maybe even April.

With a tired sigh, he stepped out onto the ice, waiting for the low groan or sharp crack that would indicate it could not bear his weight.

It held. He was not submerged to an icy death. As he made the short journey to the other side, then up into the cave, he tried not to recall what the monks at Saint Benoît’s might’ve said about baptisms, and rebirths, and the fact that his had been denied to him.

. . .

Once he happened upon the Resistance’s central cavern, Poe fucking Dameron was the first to snatch up his revolver and train it on Kylo, though his two companions—he recognized one, the dark-haired alphic woman, as the one who rowed Rey across Naberrie Creek, all those months ago—were quick to follow suit with their rifles.

He stepped further into the large chamber, dropping his pack by the jagged entranceway but keeping his hands raised.

Others joined in anyway, despite his stance of surrender, until the barrels of a dozen rifles and revolvers forced him to halt.

“Kylo Ren,” seethed the alphic woman, as someone searched him and stripped him of his weapons. He stared at her, drawing on his years under Luke’s tutelage, remembering the constant admonishments—_calm, Ben, you must find a way to subdue your alphic nature, use reason and logic and faith in God instead of your fists_—and said nothing.

“I’ll deal with this, Rose,” said Poe fucking Dameron, from Rose’s side. He turned to glower at Kylo. “You shouldn’ta come here.”

Kylo searched the faces of the cavern. There must have been thirty members of the Resistance all gathered inside the high, stalactite-draped grotto, and each of them glared back at him with glinting eyes, tightset mouths.

Leia was not among them.

“I want to speak to her,” he said.

“Who?” demanded a Beta, from Rose’s other side. His dark complexion was marred by suspicions; pinched brows and a ticking jaw.

The woman piped up. “His mother, Finn.”

Kylo focused on Poe. “Where is she?”

Poe sucked in a sharp breath. “Not possible, Ren.”

“Ooh,” said Finn. “We heard you were gone for good—that’s what Snoke’s been telling everyone._‘Once a defector, always a defector.’_”

It shouldn’t have hurt; it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. It didn’t and it wasn’t, not entirely. He flinched anyway.

From the crowd of Resistance fighters came a shout: “Shoot him!”

“No, string him up!” cried someone else.

“Behead him!_That’s _justice!” called another.

_ She would be here_, thought Kylo. There was no earthly reason for her not to be here. And there was only one thing that would keep her away from her _ beloved _cause.

If Rey’s rejection had been a blow to his heart, causing it to shatter, the possibility that his mother had passed on before he could return… it ground the remains to a fine dust and scattered them to the cavern’s drafty tunnels.

“Is she…?” was all he managed to choke out.

His face was probably contorted with creeping dismay, because Poe gave him the courtesy of a curt nod, affirming his worst fear. He had come all this way for naught. His extremities had gone numb, yet his fingertips tingled and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. How strange. He felt winded; legs turned to rubber, vision narrowing to a tunnel through which he could just barely make out Poe’s disapproving frown. 

“Where?” he wheezed. “Where is the body?”

“What’s it to you?” Finn was frowning, too; Rose’s head bobbed in agreement.

“I want… I want…”

An angry retort came from someone in the back: “Who cares what _ you _want, Kylo Ren!”

_ Kylo Ren, Kylo Ren, Kylo Ren. _ His name echoed several times through the chamber before diminishing, an indictment tolling in his ears. Even once the last echoes were gone, he could still hear the disdain in the voice that had spoken it. And in another voice that had said it just the same, back in Jakku.

“Let me take her. Let me bury the body,” he said.

“Can’t,” said Poe. “Ground’s too hard.”

“I’m going south. I’ll take her to… to Jakku.”

He hadn’t thought he was, but as soon as he said the words, he felt their rightness.

Yes. He would go back to Jakku. Leia would find rest there. It was a calm, quiet corner of the world; a good resting place for a woman who’d been fighting all her life.

“Why?” snapped Rose, with a sharp look. “What’s in Jakku?”

“Peace.”

Poe merely scoffed; the others wore expressions of equal or more outraged disbelief.

“What gives you the right to come in here, declare your intentions, take our leader with you?” questioned Finn.

“She was my _ mother_,” he tried, but his voice was faint, a shadow of itself.

Rose spat on the cave floor by his feet, splattering spittle on his weathered boots. “She was the mother of every damned soul in this cave, you wretch! You have no claim.”

Of course he didn’t. When was the last time he and his mother had even spoken? Before the war. Before the true horrors of the Catastrophe had taken hold.

He was owed nothing. By anyone.

“Got news for you—you’re not going to Jakku, pal,” said Poe, with a slow shake of his head. “You’re not headed anywhere but the gallows.”

The muzzles of the guns were drawing closer, foolishly close. So close that he could reach out and wrench one free from its bearer, turn it on them, demand they give him that which he had not come here for, but which he now wanted more than anything.

Open fire on them, if they refused.

End this foolish gambit in blood and pain and misery.

Kylo had seen so much of that in his thirty-odd years on this earth. Now he just wanted to see his mother, to speak to her, to ask forgiveness. And she was _ gone_.

He was too late.

The weight of that finality _truly _registered, belated and more potent for its slow onset; he staggered, reeling backwards, and the muzzles followed. Stumbling, he nearly tripped over an apple crate but came to be seated upon it instead, looking up at the crowd of angry, hostile faces.

What had he done to deserve mercy?

Did he?

What _ could _he do?

He thought of his father, wondering not for the first time—though he’d be loath to admit it aloud—if Han was still alive, still sailing the Atlantic somewhere. He thought of what Rey had said. Of course she would’ve met him on her way over, of course he would’ve helped her get to her family. Old Han, same as ever. Saying one thing and doing another. Hero to everyone but the one boy who’d needed him. But that was old anger, old accusations, long ago screamed across an opulent parlor room during a late-night argument. It had burned itself out. He wished he could see his father, ask his advice. Ask forgiveness from him, as well. Or give it. Or both.

So what would he, Kylo,do? How could he ever make amends for the time he’d squandered?

For all of the world’s terrifying size and scope, it was outrageously small sometimes. And shrinking ever-smaller, withering, as a result of the ghastliness that human beings had inflicted upon each other.

Kylo was tired. So tired. He had thought he wanted to go home, but it turned out home was far away and long ago, just a fading memory. There would be no home anymore but the one he made for himself, and he did not want to stay here in Illinois, where Chandrila was only a few days’ walk away, where his childhood sat on the top of a hill, crumbling to dust. He had convinced himself he was burying the past for so long; that by joining Snoke, he was killing all that had poisoned the well after the Discovery, that it was a return to form, that there might yet be a future full of glory.

Lies.

Rey was right about that, at least. He might not have sold her any outright prevarication, but the reality he’d sold himself had been a lie, so every word he’d breathed had been tinged with it.

They were all staring at him, those hard eyes, waiting for him to speak. Was he to give his final will and testament, right here and now?

What would Han do? What would Leia do? What would they want _him_ to do?

Kylo took a gamble.

“Wait,” he said, once again raising his hands in surrender. “Wait.”

“Gonna beg for your life?” jeered one of the gun-bearers.

“No.” He met Rose’s eyes, then Finn’s, then Poe’s. “I’d like to make a deal.”

. . .

It took the better part of the day to trek north through the snowy woods to the fortress. There it stood, just as it had since Kylo helped to erect it, looming and terrible and malevolent. Inside, things were as they always were: Alphas ruled the roost, Omegas repopulated it, shackled Betas served their lives away.

Somewhere in its barracks, Hux was gloating in triumph that Ren was gone, a thorn in his paw finally removed; Phasma was no doubt sharpening a sword, eager to take his place; Snoke was holding court, talking of the revolution they would one day enact.

None of it mattered to him anymore.

Finn and Rose accompanied him; he said not a word to them on their journey, and they said not a word back. In undertones, always walking behind him, always keeping an eye on him, they spoke quietly to each other.

When they arrived at a bluff on a hill that was well enough protected by the trees to be hidden from the fortress sentries but still a good vantage point for seeing inside, he gave them what they wanted. For over an hour, he pointed out weaknesses in the ramparts, explained the layout of the complex within, detailed night watch shift changes, watching as Finn furiously scribbled down notes in a leather-bound notebook.

He wondered if it was anything they didn’t already know; or if maybe they were like him, tired of perpetually waiting without knowing what for.

“You could stay,” said Finn, tentatively, once Kylo had finished speaking and they’d turned back towards the Hollow. “Leia…” he paused long enough to shoot Rose a glance, then he turned back to Kylo, “She always hoped you’d come back. You could fight with us. Join the cause.” 

They were all shivering; Kylo had to lift his legs to pull his feet free of the snow with each step, and was exhausted from the effort. He could only imagine how the diminutive Rose must feel, but she managed to keep apace him and Finn without complaint.

“Could I?” he snorted.

Rose’s grimace was one of derision; clearly she agreed with him as to the impossibility of such a future.

“Try to make it right.” Finn’s frown seemed thoughtful, when Kylo turned his head to study the man.

“Would it ever be, though? Really?”

“No,” Rose was quick to answer.

“I’ve given you what I have,” said Kylo. “My part of the deal.”

“And we’ll hold up ours.” Rose’s mittened hand landed on his bear skin cloak. “Wait a moment, Kylo.”

He peered down at her, brows pulled together, unsure why she was stopping, why she was touching him. It was strange to be touched, even through pelt and wool and cotton. The last time he’d been touched had been by Rey, and it had been tender. Loving, even, or maybe he’d just convinced himself that it was.

Rose calmly pulled her revolver from her holster and cocked it, then pointed it up at the bare tree limbs above their head. Casual. She quirked one dark brow, her expression inscrutable. Kylo swallowed. They had what they needed from him. Was this the plan all along? How fitting for his life to end in a betrayal such as this. How just.

“_I _ know who else is in Jakku,” Rose told him, speaking slowly, each breath puffing up between them in a little white cloud. “And I know that the last time I saw her, she was running scared from the First Order.”

“I never—”

“Don’t wanna talk,” she cut through with a sniff, “‘Bout what you did or didn’t do. That’s finished, and whatever’s come of it, I’ll find out in due time. All I’m talking about is what you do next. See, might be that when this is all over, I make my own way south. Check in on her and her kin, see that everything’s as it should be. I’m sure they can take care of themselves, but I reckon she wouldn’t mind a visit from a friend. You know I grew up in mine country down in Kentucky, don’t you?”

He shook his head, thrown so off-kilter by the non-sequitur that he did not correct Rose’s mistaken assumption about Rey’s family.

“Yep. Down in the holler. Did lots of hunting in those hills. Do a lot of hunting now.” She gave a little tip of her gun. “Gotten _ real _good at tracking… anything. Anywhere. No matter how cold the trail. Alphic senses, you understand. I can track far as needs be.”

Though Finn had appeared surprised when Rose first piped up, now his expression was smoothed into one of understanding, and approbation. He wore a tiny grin, just a twitch at the edge of his mouth. His gloved hand came up to rest on Rose’s shoulder, and she clutched at it tightly with her free hand.

“We both are,” Finn added. “Real good hunters, that is. Have to be in this day and age.”

“…Understood,” Kylo muttered. 

To that Rose gave a nod, beaming. There was a subtle menace to her sunny smile. She tilted her head, eyes narrowing.

“Good. See that you don’t forget, now.”

With that, she pressed on, Finn behind her, leaving Kylo to pull up the rear.

Any threat he’d held, it seemed, had been extinguished.

. . . 

If the journey north had been difficult, the return south again was nigh-insurmountable. Though his body craved rest, he knew that if he gave in and laid down, he might never rise again, so he gave himself no more than a day in the Hollow, accepting and packing whatever provisions the Resistance were willing to part with and crafting a makeshift sledge strung for his mother’s embalmed body. Then he was once again on his way.

Spring was coming on and, with it, a neverending deluge of rain and wind. Fatigue cut through Kylo’s bones, deeper than the bite of cold, wet snow or long nights or the weight of his cargo. He should’ve taken the damn bear coat with him; his shoddy attempt at a cloak paled in comparison. In his drunken state, leaving it behind had seemed to him to be a grand, elegiac gesture. One final apology and appeal to Rey’s sympathies. But now he decided he’d much prefer the real warmth of practicality to the meager, perceived warmth of his own nobility.

Still he pressed on. He didn’t know what kind of reception he would receive in Jakku. Maybe he would be told to leave again. And he would go, he swore to himself, once he had laid his mother to rest. That’s all he wanted.

Surely there were other places in the world for him.

Maybe he would make his way east, and steal a ship somehow, and sail the seas like his father before him. Maybe he would settle down in the piney woods of northern Texas and live on vermin and berries. Maybe he would lay himself down in the cemetery, atop his mother’s grave as Rey had done, and wait for the end.

It didn’t matter.

He understood her better than ever, he thought, during those long and trying weeks and months. What it felt like to have a mission, an overriding purpose that blotted out all other concerns, including the specter of whatever might come after.

Let him bury his mother somewhere warm, somewhere beautiful, somewhere quiet.

Beyond that, his so-called destiny could do with him as it pleased.

. . .

Somewhere in eastern Missouri, miserable as he marched forward through the mud in a persistent, drizzling rain, he found a winding stream and decided to follow it, away from the rails, until he came upon a farm. Last time he’d taken this journey, he had gone for the shortest and most direct routes, not sparing time for such detours, as he was recovering from his wounds and easily tired. Now he was still tired, still recovering, in a sense, but those things no longer mattered to him. He was searching for something. And on this acre of land, he found it.

A cluster of horses, probably once belonging to whoever had lived in the decaying wooden farmhouse. Gone a bit wild from years without human influence, but among them, a calm old mare who must have remembered what it meant to haul a cart, and a few shaky-legged foals, born too early in spring, who did not know well enough to scamper when a man bearing a rope approached them.

What was more, inside the old barn: two goats and a pig, a sow. And finally, the true objective of his detour: a cart.

His mother’s body carefully nestled on a bed of hay within, protected by an oilskin tarp, the pig beside it and the foals and goats walking along behind, strung up with rope also stolen from the farm, Kylo climbed up into the seat of the cart, took hold of the reins, and rambled on.

. . .

He thought of her often as he rode. When he’d been hiking, dragging the weight of his mother through the snow, physical exhaustion had not allowed for thoughts of anything that wasn’t immediately pressing. Hunger, sleep, relieving himself. Surviving the day and whatever miseries it heaped upon him.

Now he had time.

He remembered her pretty lips.

Kissing them.

The scent of her in heat, the sweetest, most tempting thing in the world.

The feel of her body against his. The warmth.

The contented purr she’d let roll off her tongue once or twice, when he’d fucked her just right.

God, how he longed for her. His hands twitched against the reins with desire.

. . .

But at least he had this to comfort himself with: from then on, things went faster and easier. He should’ve thought of this months ago, during his first voyage. But would it all have gone the way it had, if he hadn’t walked the rails behind Rey for weeks upon weeks? If he hadn’t been a sentimental fool, during his return to Illinois?

Perhaps not.

Might’ve been better if it hadn’t, though. Who could say?

Following the country roads was less of a sure thing than the rails, to be certain. They were cracked and overgrown in many spots, slowly being reclaimed by marsh and swamp and forest and fields, and some dwindled down to dirt paths and then to open plains, where sometimes a barn was collapsing in its midst, sometimes there was nothing but fallow land. There were a lot of stops and starts.

Still better than walking.

So it was with a speed he had not possessed before, and a rigidity to his days—besides the body to protect from the elements, he now had six beasts to feed and four wheels to keep oiled and rolling—that Kylo followed the sun-bleached signs along the road and the map he still carried in his pack. Together they brought him ever-closer to his future, which held for him a fate he dreamed of and dreaded in equal measure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45392/ulysses)?
> 
> Where did Benjamin Solo's [middle name](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tobias_Beckett) come from?
> 
> Who is [Calrissian](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Lando_Calrissian) and what's a [Bespin](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bespin)? 😏 What about the inspo for [Roz](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/RO-Z67/Legends)?
> 
> What kind of [gambling](http://backinmytime.blogspot.com/2013/01/19th-century-gambling.html) might Han have been doing at this point in history?
> 
> A look at [Han's dice](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Han's_dice).
> 
> What might Han and Ben [listened to on the radio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_drama#1880%E2%80%931930:_Early_years)?
> 
> Also, I forgot to include this in an earlier chapter: inspiration for the name of the [Naberrie Creek](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/House_Naberrie).
> 
> Finally, who is [Saint Benoît’s](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Obi-Wan_Kenobi) named for?
> 
> Okay, that's all from me for now. We've just got a bit more healing to do. Thank you for reading this far, even through the angst! 💗


	18. Now, in this blank of things, a harmony, Home-felt, and home-created, comes to heal That grief for which the senses still supply Fresh food; for only then, when memory Is hushed, am I at rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to the ever-generous [Mae](https://twitter.com/MaeReylo) for this lovely [moodboard](https://twitter.com/MaeReylo/status/1189076110488662016)! I love it, it's stunning! 😍

**Henrietta despairs often during the years she toils away as a nurse to those dying from wounds inflicted during the bombings, from starvation, and from the Lover’s Death. Many evenings find her curled up on Sister Dosmit’s bed, overcome by the sad inevitability of her patients’ fate.**

**“Why?” she asks, again and again, though she knows there is no satisfactory answer the nun can give her. “Why is this happening? Why is the world this way?”**

**She is a grown woman now, perhaps too old for these sorts of questions, and besides that, a flowered Omega, as Mother Maz puts it. Her heats come at the regular tri-monthly intervals; she and Ivano have begun meeting in secret in the cellar, scotch on their tongues, trying to find relief together. He has grown up to be a sweet, mild-mannered man who does his best to help her, as she does for him.**

**It never really feels like enough for Rey and she suspects it does not for him, either. Neither of them have the heart to say so aloud. In a time when most people have nothing, they at least have ** ** _something_****. It must suffice.**

**Some nuns at Saint Padmé’s have suggested that she leave, find herself an Alpha, try to get herself mated to a laborer who lives in the countryside, where the bombing is less prevalent. Someone who will take care of her in these trying times.**

**She could do that. She has taken no vows, as the nuns and monks have. She is a woman grown and in theory, unfettered.**

**But she does not.**

**So she lays herself down in Dosmit’s bed in the evening, sometimes hearing bombs fall in other parts of the city, sometimes hearing the wail of the dying in the dormitories down below, and she weeps into Dosmit’s lap.**

**Dosmit lets her. She strokes Henrietta’s hair gently, telling her of times before the Discovery.**

**“Once,” she says, on a particularly rainy and dispiriting evening, “when I was out at sea, there was a terrible storm. The thunder was the loudest thing I’d ever heard—louder than the bombs, even.”**

**Henrietta snorts her disbelief into Dosmit’s apron.**

**“It’s true! And the sky was a beautiful lilac-white from all the lightning. It was incredible—turned the sea a sheer green—right before it struck both our masts.”**

**This story is one of Rey’s favorites, a fact of which Dosmit is well aware. Today they lost four young women to the Lover’s Death, and the sound of their lascivious pleading before the end is still ringing in Henrietta’s ears.**

**But this story helps.**

**“What happened?” she asks, though she already knows.**

**“They came down, cracked the deck and hull so badly the ship ripped in half. We were stranded, tossed around like a bottle in a bathtub. The ship went down so fast, there was hardly time to think.”**

**“Were you afraid?”**

**“Terribly.”**

**“Did you… did you think you were going to die?” She glances up at the nun, who offers a kind smile in response.**

**“I did. But… there was a surge in my veins—like ** ** _I _ ** **was the one who’d been struck. It was as though a current of electricity ran through my whole body.” She continues stroking Rey’s hair, a gentle, steady rhythm, as she contemplates. Then: “It wasn’t the lightning, nor the storm, exactly. Just… the thrill. I might have died that night and I knew it. But I realized something—in all the nights that had come before, good or bad, I’d lived. I’d ** ** _lived_****, Henrietta. And that night, I would, too.”**

**Again, she smiles. Not the grim, practiced smile she gives to patients. Not the patient, forbearing smile she used to give to young Henrietta. This smile is something genuine and wild.**

**“Life. _Glorious_ life.”**

**Henrietta cannot completely contain her scoff. Life does not feel very glorious of late. But Dosmit shakes her head.**

**“It’s true. One thing, death, is terrible, and one thing, life, is miraculous. But life and death, pain and pleasure, joy and sorrow—one cannot be without the other, can it?”**

**She sniffs. “S’pose not.”**

**“No,” Dosmit says. “So I went down in that ship, and I nearly drowned, and there was a moment where I hovered between the terrible and the miraculous, but my time on Earth was not over, so I was washed ashore by morning. And for that, I was ** ** _grateful_****. I saw the moment where I could have lived or died. The coin went up, it came back down. It landed on life. I walked away from that wreck—only two other crew members did as well. Yes, that’s the word—grateful. Even now, in this bloody place, I’m grateful for that.”**

**This bloody place, as Dosmit put it, is the only home Henrietta’s ever known. She frowns, but refrains from comment.**

**“It’s not all going to be good and it’s not all going to be bad. And only ** ** _you _ ** **get to decide what you make of that.”**

**“What if it all becomes too much?” she wonders.**

**Dosmit shakes her head with certainty. “It won’t be. You’re stronger than you know—if there is anyone in this world who can learn the steps of the dance between the terrible and the miraculous, Henrietta Wednesday… it is you.”**

* * *

_ Winter 1920 _

The winter stretched on for what felt to be a hundred thousand days, each of them grey, each of them windy, each of them leeching the color from the world, rendering it all a monochromatic hellscape, sere and solemn.

That suited Rey just fine.

If asked to recount how she’d spent those hundred thousand dreary days, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to. She’d had the flu, maybe. There’d been weeks of coughing and sneezing. 

It had snowed once. A light dusting that was gone by midday, but Rey could just barely recall what an ethereal sight it had been, at first light, glittering silver-white and reflecting the sun like the whole world had been turned to crystal. And she remembered this: the scent of it wounded her so deeply she’d hurried back to bed to hide until it’d melted away.

There’d been food. Made by her, it would seem. It passed her lips, she chewed and swallowed it. Thus, she did not starve. She had another faint recollection of hauling water from the well to the kitchen, how her arms ached, how she stunk of sweat after. She supposed she must have bathed, somehow, sometime. Her body remembered the heat of the water all around her, sitting in the tub until it went cold and cloudy with filth, even if her mind did not. 

Mostly, though, she slept. In the bed that still smelled like him, she slept. Until the scent of her despair blotted out his, then everything else. Until it was all she knew.

She closed her eyes. Months slipped by. It was all a murky blur.

Stasis.

_ Spring 1921 _

One day, she stepped out onto the porch to find the sky a sickly grey-green, low, the scent on the wind that of ozone and trouble. It had been raining all morning, a steady battering against the house, and she did not linger, but rushed back to bed, where it was warm and dry.

A few hours later, a fearsome funnel of noise and wind ripped past Jakku, sounding like some unholy combination of London’s air raid alarms and a steel ship’s horn and a colossal tea kettle, howling out its celestial rage.

Terrified, Rey watched through her mottled bedroom window as a finger of the cosmos reached down from that sickly sky to wreak chaos upon the earth. It was terrible. She was shaking, her heart beating louder than the wind, when it came to her, a revelation: she did not want to die. She was not _ ready _to die. Huddled in the corner, small as she could make herself, white-knuckled hands clasped together, she sent up a prayer to Padmé.

_ Dear Saint Padmé, we are all pilgrims… _

When it was over, the storm left in its wake a berth of disturbed earth and overturned trees. She went out onto the prairie to investigate, marveling at the exposed roots, clods of dirt still clinging to them. They reached up towards the heavens like gnarled hands raised in supplication, like they might still be saved. Like they were going to _ survive_.

They were miraculous.

“Protect me until I am safely home,” whispered Rey, to no one but the trees. “Help me in all my needs and difficulties.”

Though they said nothing back, she felt comforted by their unbroken presence.

. . .

Other twisters and storms followed throughout the Spring. The terror they wrought in Rey never eased, but she did become attuned to the warning signs. And as the mild winter dissipated into ever-warmer temperatures—days of rain and an eventual return of verdant life to the dead land—she began to eye the rough floorboards of her seldom-used parlor, wondering if she couldn’t pull up a corner and dig out a root cellar, for the storing of goods and a place to hide during next Spring’s stormy season.

It was the first time she had made a plan for the distant future since the day she had buried Dosmit and decided to embark upon her God forsaken journey.

The idea went on a list. Once she had entertained one thought of the future, others presented themselves like courtiers to a king. Soon enough, she had not just one thing she planned to do or fix, but an array of them.

In her mind’s eye, where for so many months she had seen nothing but a void, she now saw herself, in this house. She saw a garden. She saw fresh paint. She saw a journal full of sketchings. She saw a tuned piano. She saw a life.

_ The terrible, the miraculous. _

In the back of the general store, Rey discovered burlap sacks full of seeds in a storage room. She could not identify them; there was no way for her to know what sort of crop they’d yield. They had been dried and stored inside the sacks in packets made from newspaper—dated 1910 or thereabouts—and she had her doubts as to whether a single one of them would still be able to germinate.

However, it was not as though she had the luxury of discernment. So after the earth had been softened from days upon days of balmy, headache-inducing thunderstorms, she went out to the garden behind the house, tilled the dark soil, stripping away the overgrown weeds, and planted those seeds. Every last one.

Prayers offered to Padmé, she waited, and while she waited, she labored. There was, after all, a lot of work to be done in sustaining oneself. Somehow, the labor had gone unnoticed in her time of mourning, but the twisting storm had rattled her awake, and now she noticed everything. Each day, there was water to fetch, wood for the stove to be cut and stored inside, hunting to be done out on the prairie, and fishing in the creeks. She’d made no effort, in the months that had passed, to improve the house—she could never be certain she was staying, she had not felt certain of anything anymore—but once a week, she began to wash her clothing, along with the linens upon which she slept. The linens upon which they’d slept _ together, _once, in what felt like another lifetime.

His scent was but a memory by now. Sometimes, though, when she hung the linens on the line, the breeze making them flutter and billow, she would press her face to them and breathe in deeply anyway. Her mind would conjure him up, a ghost in her senses.

_ We could’ve been ghosts together, _ she would think to herself.

It comforted her to remember how he smelled; Rey found that she did not resent that solace as she once had. There had been a time in her life when a thousand tiny things had brought her solace, when she was small and new to the world. There had then been a time when the only thing had brought her solace had been the idea of bringing herself here, and seeing the resting place of her parents, and in doing so, finding her own rest.

Now it was her memories that offered solace. Rey thought of Dosmit, and she smiled. She thought of Captain Solo’s gruff kindness, of Leia and Finn and Rose’s offers of belonging, and she smiled. And Kylo, too, she thought of. She thought of the gifts he’d left her, the gentle way he’d touched her and spoken to her, and she smiled. She didn’t think of their angry final exchange. She thought of soft moments, feasting on the good and spurning the bad.

It was a season of forgiveness, and Rey decided she could no more begrudge him the cherished place he had claimed for himself in her memories than she could begrudge herself for allowing him to stay there.

In memory, the rough edges of truth could be sanded away until something once painful became precious.

. . .

In the evening, when the sun sank under the endless grey sky, flicking scarlet about the clouds as if in protest of their perpetual drabness, Rey would sit out on her porch and stare off into the distance, down the lonely dirt road, watching as the grasses swayed in the whistling prairie winds.

It was not that she was waiting. She had done so much waiting in her life already. But loneliness like she had never known had climbed inside her heart; there _ was _a hint of longing, now, to see the shape of a tall, hulking man come ambling down that stretch of dirt.

To test the weathered edges of memory, and see if there was not still sharpness underneath, if he was not still a cudgel she could use to punish herself for the mistakes she had made.

There were things she would have liked to have said to the people she had lost. There were clarifications on sentiments previously expressed. Perhaps some amendments. With most of them, the chance would never come in this life. With him, it might. If he decided to return. If she struck out to find him.

Rey dredged up the memories of things they had said to one another. Oh yes, the pain was still sharp as her hunting blade. Whyever would he return to her now? No matter, she supposed. What was done, was done. Such a simple thing to tell herself. So easy to pretend—she had gotten so good at pretending over the years. 

. . .

A few weeks after the seeds were planted, tiny green leaves began to sprout from the soil.

Rey wept with joy to see them, though she did not yet know what they would be or if they would sustain her in the coming year. It hardly mattered. It would matter later, but at that moment, it did not. There was new life on earth, something fresh and pure and untrampled. And _ she _had been its maker.

Maz had asked this of her once, what felt like a lifetime ago, and she had thought it an impossible request; but as she knelt in the dirt and crooned to her tender shoots, morning after morning, goggling at how rapidly they were growing into all manner of plants, she reassessed the meaning of such words as _ possible _ and _ impossible_. Tomato, carrots, onions, garlic, sugar beet, cotton, corn, barley, sorghum, hell, there was even the tentative beginnings of what she thought might be fruit trees in one row of oats, somehow mixed in there with the hardier crop.

“Suppose this makes me a farmer,” she would whisper to herself from time to time, awe-struck, chuckling, as her field of buried seeds and dirt soon become an expanse of green.

There was other life emerging besides that which she’d planted; one of her projects during the rainy Spring—after the storm had come and awoken her from her stupor—was to catch some of the hares running wild out in the fields and scrap together a hutch for them, using supplies scavenged from the general store and the empty neighboring houses. Soon enough there were bunnies, and then before she knew it they were full-grown, and she had herself a tidy little resource of fur and meat and companionship.

It was not the companionship she desired. They were wonderful listeners, but they never asked her what she wanted, never smiled at her with sad, alphic eyes, never gently pulled her body close.

They were not him.

But she had driven him away. She would not blame herself for that. There was already enough for which she blamed herself. Her choices were her own, she’d made each of them knowing they were potentially mistakes.

Which is not to say she never wondered what might have been.

. . .

The funny thing was: Rey had learned to take care of herself long before she ever got to Jakku. And she had been surviving long before the Catastrophe. And throughout it. And after it was finished, and the dust was settled, and nothing but madness remained. But what was happening here was not quite survival. Not _ merely _survival, that is.

Spring drew on; it brought another heat. She saw herself through it, as she always had before him, and as she would ever after him. It was as agonizing as ever. But she did more than survive that, too. With her own fingers, she brought herself pleasure, and she rejected the shame that threatened to well up in response. The climaxes she wrought did not completely slake her need, but it was something.

It was _ something_.

She rarely admitted her loneliness outright, either aloud or in her mind. To do so would invite regret. And regret, such that it was, in all its myriad nuances of depth and sharpness, was something to be cried into her pillow under the cover of darkness.

In some ways, solitude was more familiar to her now than company. _That_, she would laugh wryly to herself, she hardly even had the capacity for these days. How busy she was. How much there was yet to be done. What need had she for friends or family, for a lover? None.

Or so she would remind herself often, as though wishing might make it so.

  


_ Summer 1921 _

She was sitting on her porch one warm evening, sipping her dandelion wine, same as usual, when it finally happened.

It had been a full day. Tending to her crops, playing with the newborn bunnies that had appeared overnight, gathering kindling from the copse of osage and juniper an hour’s walk to the east, doing some minor repairs to the stove—she’d been up since dawn, and sweating nearly as long, and though she stunk through and through, there was no small sense of satisfaction in all that she’d accomplished. In fact, she was humming an old nursery rhyme and contemplating the ingredients of a rabbit stew she was planning, letting herself drift a little, eyes closed, when she heard it.

A distant sound, unfamiliar amongst the tapestry of sounds she heard every day. This was not the dull thunder of the passing bison nor the chirping of crickets nor the rat-a-tat of an industrious woodpecker.

Creaking. Like the turning of large wheels held together by rusted metal. And the rhythmic ‘clip-clop, clip-clop’ of shod hooves on dry, packed dirt.

Cautiously, she opened her eyes.

There, in the distance, at the subtle peak of a low hillock beyond the edges of Jakku’s peripheral farmland, she could make out a shape against the blushing sky.

A big man wearing a porkpie hat, seated upon an uncovered wagon pulled by an old mare. Beside the wagon walked two tethered goats and a couple of young horses, by the looks of it, the tangle of coltish limbs and long noses silhouetted in the dusk.

She watched, dumbstruck, not entirely trusting her own eyes, as the cohort drew closer. She’d had this dream before. And in moments of true desperation, utter loneliness, this mirage had appeared in her waking hours as well, replete with phantom sounds and smells, that winter frost and chimney smoke, promising touch upon her skin again and someone whose grasping love might carry her through the end of days.

A wish of love returned, now that she finally felt within herself the tender beginnings of that ability.

Rey blinked purposefully a few times. She rubbed her eyes. Then she closed them and counted to ten. When she opened them, the cart was even nearer, bigger, the smell of horseflesh and hay and roasting chestnuts in her nose.

No. This was no mirage. For as he rolled into town, he tugged on the reins, uttering a soft command to the mare; the wagon and sundry came to a halt. Rey could see inside: there was a pallet of straw. Upon it lay a shrouded body. That had never been part of the dreams nor the hallucinations.

There also a pig, who snorted jovially in her direction, and several crates, unmarked, neatly stowed along the wagon’s boarded sides. 

He cleared his throat; Rey had yet to look at him, though she could smell him, though her skin had erupted into pimpled gooseflesh, though a shiver passed down her spine, though every cell in her body was screaming out, demanding that she look, look, _ look_.

Could it be?

Had she summoned him?

She had not sensed him coming, which surprised her. But then again, she _ had _been thinking of him, often. For more hours than she could count, she had sat upon this porch and contemplated what she might say to him if he ever returned. Of course, now she could not recall a single word of it. Her eyes felt heavy, affixed to the contents of his wagon; to lift them up and meet his own felt an insurmountable task.

“Evening,” he said, his deep voice tearing through the veil of birdsong and the soft bleating of the goats.

It broke the spell. Rey looked at Kylo. Really looked.

He was tired; that much, she could tell right away. Those same dark circles under his eyes, his strong shoulders stooped. His attire was appropriate for the heat of the day—the bearskin cloak served as padding for his seat; he wore a simple, roughspun pair of trousers and shirt. And they were dirty, worn and patched inexpertly in places. He sat with his elbows resting upon his knees, holding the reins loosely in one gloved hand. There was no sign of his sword. When their eyes met, he touched the brim of his hat, as though they were mere acquaintances passing each other in the street, on a normal day, in a world that no longer existed.

“E—evening?” she managed, and it sounded like a query, as though she could not discern up from down nor day from night. _ Was _it evening? She felt as though everything she’d thought she’d known had been called question.

He nodded, an affirmation of her question or a polite gesture or perhaps a relieved tic in response to her acknowledgment. Rey’s head was swimming; she could not understand the sight before her, could not understand _ him_.

“I’d like to bury her in the Jakku cemetery,” he said softly.

Again her gaze drifted to the wagon’s cargo. “Who…” 

“Leia.”

“I—oh,” she breathed.

He waited, shifting his weight in his seat when the horse fidgeted. Rey could think of nothing to say, and she could not seem to tear her eyes from the body. The body that had once been Leia. Leia, who had helped her to get herself to Jakku, who had sheltered her for a week, who had offered her a home with the Resistance. Leia, who she had sometimes considered returning to, when the loneliness of Jakku had nearly overwhelmed her.

“May I?” he asked, interrupting her ruminations.

Rey blinked at him. “All… alright.”

“Thank you.” He nodded again, then flicked the reins, starting up his ramshackle parade once more.

“Wait!” she called out. She jumped to her feet as her mind finally caught up with reality. The horse and cart were halted and Kylo turned in his seat, sending her a wary look from under his hat.

“Burying kin is… a tiresome task,” she said. “Do you… that is…”

He made no effort to help her; in silence, he waited for her to spit it out.

She cleared her throat and tried again. “Would you—care for some company?”

A slight dip of his hat. “Yes, I would.”

“Ri… right, then,” she said, and brushed her calloused hands down the front of her trousers, as if that would somehow make her presentable. As if she cared, or he did, or there was someone else who might.

Then she stepped down off the porch, and made to follow.

. . .

“Dosmit Ræh was born in the part of London that used to be called Shoreditch,” Rey told Kylo, after he’d retrieved a shovel from somewhere and set upon an empty plot of earth beside her own parents’ burial place. She seated herself against the iron cemetery fence as she spoke, recovered at last from her shock. Her hands, she kept busy by plucking bluebonnet and scarlet sage from between the grasses and placing them in a neat pile by her feet.

“She decided early on in her life that she was going to be a sailor like her older brothers, even though it was against custom and superstition and mostly forbidden for women to work that way. She dressed as a man and sailed around the world.”

Kylo had rolled his sleeves up before getting to work. Upon pain of death Rey would not admit it, but her gaze was drawn to the flex and play of the muscles in his forearms as he worked. He’d taken his hat off, and his dark hair tumbled down, almost obscuring his face from her, though she still caught a twitch at the corner of his mouth.

He was beginning to sweat. It was beading upon his brow, making his hair stick, and darkening his once-white shirt. With the sweat came a redoubling of his scent, same as ever—that first snow of winter, and the hearth, with all its comforts; it was an assault on her senses, but not an unwelcome one. 

“Mostly she took work as a cook under captains who didn’t know what she was or who looked the other way.”

He gave no response save for a nod and did not halt his labor.

“Then after the Discovery, when her ship next docked in Liverpool, she was obliged to partake in the Great Census of 1890. You’ve heard of it?”

He smiled grimly at the ditch forming under his shovel. “I’ve heard of it.”

“Well,” she went on, her voice shaking slightly, “They found out she was a woman and an Omega, at the same time. A double sin, I suppose.That was the end of sailing for Dosmit. She was given a choice—rejoin society in her proper place and find a mate, or join the other omegan nuns and monks at Saint Padmé’s home for Foundling Omega Orphans. Dedicate the remainder of her life to serving the greater good, so to speak.”

“She chose the latter,” said Kylo.

Rey gave him a look meant to say: obviously. But she did not utter the word aloud, as she was very glad to have someone to speak to, and wanted to remain a while longer. She did not want to start a quarrel with him that would end with angry words, or one of them having to leave. 

With a sad shake of his head, he chuckled.

“I wanted to be like her when I was small,” she confessed. “I still do.”

He straightened, panting, though he did not look at her. “My father was—_is _ a sailor,” he said, after a moment. “When _ I _ was small, I went on a voyage with him once, across the Atlantic.”

With that, he began to shovel again, but continued his story as he worked. 

“Used to stand at the bow of the _ Falcon _ and imagine I was an explorer, the first to discover some far-off part of the world. Back then I didn’t know I was an Alpha. Didn’t think of my dreams as some designationist trait. I was just… a boy.”

“You are Han Solo’s son,” she said. 

It sounded like a revelation, but in truth it was something she’d long ago realized, back when they were both gripped by heat and rut. She had not wanted to acknowledge it then. Those wounds had still been too raw. There was a layer of time over them now, time and space and night after night spent contemplating. Like a scab had formed; like she had begun to heal and could pull off the bandage, examine the carnage.

He peered at her. “And he was the one who brought you to Canada.”

She nodded; he nodded back.

“He said… you were lost,” she ventured, in a small voice. “He spoke of you as though you’d died.”

Kylo huffed to himself. She might’ve missed it or mistaken it for exertion, if she weren’t studying him with such avid interest.

“He wasn’t wrong,” he muttered.

There were creeping vines of prairie rose overtaking the cemetery fence; pulling her hunting knife from its sheath, Rey hacked off a few lengths of it and began to plait them together, careful not to crush the lush flowers or prick herself upon its thorns. First, she formed a rod, and then she wound two arms through its middle. Once finished, she wove the stems of her gathered wildflowers in among the plaited vines, until the whole thing brimmed with blossoming pink and scarlet and violet. 

While they worked in tandem at their separate tasks, the song of dusk softened the silence between them, and the world grew darker, though no less warm. When she was satisfied with her creation, Rey stood and passed over to the head of the ditch, then carefully placed the flowering cross upon the ground.

“That’s… that’s very kind of you,” he said, swallowing, again pausing to stare up at her. “I… thank you. For your kindness.”

“Er, yes. All right,” she replied uncomfortably. Seeking reprieve from his searching eyes, she meandered out of the cemetery and over to where the horses and goats remained tied to his wagon. As she pet the long nose of the mare, then the goats and foals, she considered her next question carefully. In the wagon, nestled in the hay beside the body, the pig snorted in its sleep.

Rey turned to find he had resumed digging. “What will you do now?” she asked, lifting her voice enough for it to carry over to him.

“Thought I might… stay a while,” he answered. “Won’t get in your way—I’ll keep to myself. But the land here is good, lots to hunt, and I…”

_ The terrible, the miraculous. _ The word _stay_ was a bolt of lightning kickstarting her rusted-over heart, a fearsome twister ripping down the dormant hallways of her mind. _ Stay?_

_Stay, stay, stay._

_ Yes! _ she thought to shout. _ Stay forever, and never leave me. _

_ No, _ she nearly snarled, the old fear a fire in her belly. _ If you stay, I know that I will come to need you. Love you. You would doom me to opening my heart again? You, who understands my pain better than any other? _

But what she managed to get out was: “It won’t be like it was. I don’t want—” 

“I know.” The smile he sent her was strained. “Don’t bother yourself about that. Like I said, I’ll keep to myself.”

“Oh.”

Kylo took a moment to wipe his brow. He was breathless from exertion. They gaped at each other through the wrought iron bars.

“Say the word, Rey, and I’ll go.”

“We… won’t be repeating…” her voice faltered, fading away to nothing.

Kylo shook his head.

This was what she had longed for, wasn’t it? Was she ready to admit that, at least?

Rey rubbed the soft ears of the nearest goat, thinking. It gave a complacent _ ba-ah_, and shifted closer to her. She thought of all the things she had desired to say to him, the amendments, the clarifications. She thought about the way it had felt when he had simply held her, his big warm body pressed close.

“Stay if you like,” she told him, after far too long had passed. “S’pose you can choose any of the houses.”

His relief was a palpable thing: a scent, the barest hint of released tension around his eyes, and a twin sensation within herself, of something that had been tightly wound finally giving way, as though his emotions were hers. Or… was that simply her _ own _relief?

Rey hardly knew.

“Thank you,” he said, and directed his attention back to the grave. The hole had grown deeper and the heap beside him, higher.

She was not ready to invite him in, and she was not quite sure what else to say at the moment. It seemed to Rey that they’d reached another kind of détente, but one that felt more settled and less fragile than those that had preceded it. Perhaps that came down to her—her ebbing anger, her ebbing sorrow. Perhaps it was her loneliness, which had gone so long unacknowledged, finally rearing its fearsome head.

What they needed was time, she decided. The goat set itself down in the dirt for a nap, so she sat by its side and continued to rub its ears as she watched him dig.

Yes. Time was what they needed.

Lucky for them, they were living through whatever came after the end of the world. Much had been taken in the Catastrophe. Time, however, just so happened to be the one thing they had been gifted, in abundance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://www.poemhunter.com/poems/nature/page-1/17330/)?
> 
> [Wild fauna](https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/wildlife_diversity/wildscapes/ecoregions/ecoregion_4.phtml) of the Blackland Prairie region.
> 
> Is it realistic that [any of the seeds Rey found](https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/gardening/a20706339/how-to-store-seeds/) in the magical general store would still be able to germinate? No more or less realistic, I suspect, than Leia's body arriving in Jakku in pristine condition. And yet, gentle readers, I hope that you will suspend disbelief on both accounts, for me. 😂
> 
> How do you [till a garden](https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/soil-fertilizers/how-to-till-a-garden-tilling-your-soil.htm)?
> 
> Let's talk [soil](https://texasalmanac.com/topics/environment/soils-texas). [This was helpful in that it listed some of the crops that are grown in the Blackland Prairie region of Texas!]
> 
> More [crop info](https://www.partnersforconservation.org/our-landscapes/blackland-prairie-texas/).
> 
> What is a [sugar beet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_beet)? What about [sorghum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorghum)? Has anyone eaten either? Are they any good?
> 
> [Some frontier life](https://faculty.chass.ncsu.edu/slatta/cowboys/essays/front_life2.htm) information. Very interesting resource!
> 
> [Planting oats in the spring](http://agrilife.org/lubbock/files/2016/01/Considering-Spring-Planted-Oats-TX-High-Plains-2016.pdfl). [At some point I just started collecting farming/agriculture articles about anywhere in Texas, basically.]
> 
> I have never had [dandelion wine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_wine#Dandelion_wine) and I would like to try but I think even more than that, I would like to try and make it myself. [This](https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/162202/dandelion-wine/) seems like a simple enough recipe. Maybe I'll give it a go next summer.
> 
> Some more [native species of flora and fauna in the region](https://sites.google.com/a/g.coppellisd.com/blackland-prairie/native-species), including [prairie rose](https://tynnativeplants.wordpress.com/shrubs-2/scientific-name/prairie-rose-illinois-rose-climbing-prairie-rose/), [bluebonnet](https://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/archives/parsons/flowers/bluebonnet/bluebonnetstory.html), and [scarlet sage](https://www.growveg.com/plants/us-and-canada/how-to-grow-scarlet-sage-salvia/).
> 
> [Inspo](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f8/18/f4/f818f40e3e93518ac3115412102bc8e3.jpg) for Kylo's wagon.
> 
> Okay, phew! I think that's all for me. We're almost at the end now. I hope this chapter brought a bit of resolution, after the last couple weeks' worth of pain. Let me know what you thought, if you have a minute? I'd love to hear it, and thank you for reading! 💚


	19. You shall love your crooked neighbour With your crooked heart.

_ Summer 1921 _

When Rey emerged from her house the morning after Kylo returned, he was not difficult to find. Across the way, on the porch of a house that was in slightly better repair than the others—it still had a roof, and its windows were intact—seated in one of a pair of rocking chairs he’d procured from God-only-knew-where, was Kylo. It was the last house on the road before the farmland and the distant sod houses, farthest from hers but still technically inside the rough limits of Jakku. He was rocking the chair, one booted foot propped up against the porch roof’s wooden support column, drinking from a tin mug.

His eyes were directed away from her, towards the east. He was watching the sunrise. At the sound of her door opening, his head whipped around; his face gave away nothing, expression entirely inscrutable. He nodded at her.

She nodded back, then turned her feet towards her garden, throwing herself into her plans for the day.

This became the first of their rituals.

. . .

They didn’t speak often. Not at first.

Respectful nods, passing greetings like _ ‘evening’_, _ ‘afternoon,’ _ and _ ‘morning.’ _Polite neighbors, mindful of each other, so civil, so courteous.

Rey was always aware of him now, in that hindbrain kind of way. Sensed when he was near and far, could sometimes even pick up on his emotions. Often, throughout the weeks that followed, the scent of him hung in the air, and she gladly breathed it in.

It made her mouth water and her tongue tremble with words gone too long unspoken.

But he didn’t speak either. So, for a while, the center held.

. . .

One day she found the 1908 edition of _ The Old Farmer’s Almanac _ sitting on her front porch along with five small burlap sacks filled with grains and another with coffee beans.

There was a note attached to the gifts. It read, _ ‘belated birthday presents’, _ in looping, elegant cursive. It was unsigned, but there was no doubt in her mind as to the giver.

When next she saw Kylo, he tipped his hat to her but otherwise said nothing, certainly not mentioning it. Whereas once she had accepted his gifts but ignored his presence, and once she had rejected both, now she dipped her head towards him, and read the book in bed that evening, grateful for the knowledge and the gesture.

Were they were back to circling each other, back to strangers? Was that all they ever were?

_ Strangers who had learned each other’s bodies? _

_ No_, Rey decided, upon greeting him quietly the next dawn, before she headed to her garden and he to his hunt, rifle and ammunition strapped to his back.

They were something else now.

. . .

“What happened?” she asked softly one afternoon, upon returning from her own hunting excursion—two lizards and a passenger pigeon, not the worst day’s haul—to find him dozing in his rocking chair. Normally at this time, the height of the day, he had already been gone for hours. It was a nice surprise to see him here, looking so relaxed.

“Where did you go?” she added, to clarify. “When you left.”

He opened his eyes. Rey shifted her weight from one foot to the other under his scrutiny, curling her toes inside her boots. Her sweat-dampened shirt clung to her back, but the chill of it felt good in the heat of midday. 

“Care to sit?” he replied, with a jerk of his chin towards the matching chair beside his.

“Thank you, I will.”

Once she was seated, rocking herself nervously, he cleared his throat.

“I told you my choices,” he said.

“Death or exile.”

With a tired sigh, Kylo let his head sag against the high back of the chair. “That’s right.”

“Which did you choose?”

His mouth twitched, like he wanted to smile—but he didn’t, and he didn’t look at her, either.

“Maybe I decided I didn’t care for either,” he said. The light struck his eyes in such a way that they looked amber, like aged whiskey. Oh, the memories that brought. He was staring off at the prairie with a thoughtful expression, as if he were a thousand miles away. Rey studied him, studied the scar she’d given him. It was fully healed now, and more faded than the last time they’d been this close. Quietly, he added, “Maybe I decided that whatever happened, it would be on my own terms.”

“You fight or you flee, but you do not mop,” mumbled Rey.

“Hm?”

She shrugged. “Something Dosmit said to me once.”

“A wise woman,” he remarked. “Luke used to make me mop at the monastery—I hated it.”

“Me too. Always have.”

Rey offered him a tentative smile. When he glanced at her, his eyebrows jumped in surprise. But after a beat, slowly, cautiously, he returned it.

. . .

She could not help but take notice of how he spent his time that summer. Besides the hunting and fishing that took him away from Jakku for much of every morning and afternoon, he had begun to work on the house he had claimed for himself.

Projects that—by coincidence or design—kept him out of doors, in her sight, available to her should she choose to engage him in another of their tentative conversations. She often took him up on this tacit offer.

Another ritual of theirs.

Bit by bit, as the sweltering heat of each afternoon mellowed into early evening, Kylo replaced the rotting wooden tiles on the roof, repaired the shutters that’d been hanging dejectedly from their hinges, sanded the porch floorboards, built new stairs, re-caulked the gaps between the logs of the house’s walls, applied fresh paint he’d procured from God-knew-where—maybe some other forlorn town he’d come across on one of his hunting excursions—and a dozen other tasks that transformed the sad shack into a proper home once more.

Sometimes Rey would bring out a coffee for him and herself. They’d sip together as they assessed the progress he was making.

“Looks good,” she would tell him.

“Thank you,” he’d say, cheeks slightly pink.

Perhaps inspired by his efforts but not quite ready to tackle her own home, she resolved to build a fence for her garden, to keep out the deer and antelope that had taken to nibbling on her crops.

It was a slow start. First, she needed to gather posts from the old farms outside of Jakku. They were heavy, so she borrowed Kylo’s wagon and mare without asking while he was gone, a little embarrassed not to be able to do it on her own. If he noticed they'd been disturbed, he made no mention of it. Next, she wandered farther out, to the forests that lay to the east, in search of branches suitable for comprising the fence itself. All of this was done in the spare time between her other chores, so it took nearly two weeks before she was prepared to begin.

On the day she set the posts—holes already dug, a layer of pebbles gathered from the shores of the spring distributed at their bases—Kylo wandered by, casual as could be, and then came to a halt in front of her.

“Looks good,” he said, one cheek dimpling with a hint of a smirk.

Rey was mid-struggle with an exceptionally heavy post, arms wrapped around it, hauling it towards the next open hole. “Thank you,” she huffed.

“Don’t suppose you need a hand?” he offered.

She froze; without intending, just responding on instinct, her head shot up to fix him with her iciest glare. “You think I can’t do this?” she snapped. “Haven’t I gotten this far on my own?”

Kylo frowned.

But she couldn’t stop herself now. The old resentment rolled back in, like it had been lying in wait for the right moment. “I don’t need help, Kylo. I don’t _ need_—”

“I’ll just go.” His hands shot up in a gesture of surrender, palms facing her.

“I’m not a helpless Omega,” she ran on, the words hot and bitter on her tongue. It felt good to say them, to make her declaration, but it hurt, too. Her throat ached. “I won’t—I never—”

“Rey, I know,” he said, backing away, shaking his head.

Was this what she wanted? Was this what she had meant to happen? To send him away again?

_ It wasn’t. _

“No!” she cried, the thought of him leaving again more than she could bear.

It was Kylo’s turn to freeze. “No?” he echoed, faintly, unsure.

Rey shook her head, letting the post drop to the ground. She stared at it, then at her gloved hands. Her anger was with him, and yet it wasn’t. It was with the world that had made him. But that world had made her, too. They were who they were. Was she really going to spend her life resenting him and herself for that?

“… No,” she said again, firmly this time. She looked up at him. His eyes were wide. Hopeful. “Don’t… Don’t go.”

“I’ve insulted you,” he reasoned. “It wasn’t my—”

“No, I—”

“I’ll leave you—”

Again she cut across him: “I wish you wouldn’t. You can… You can help me. I’d _ like _for you to help me. Build this fence.”

For a very long time, Kylo simply stared at her with those wide eyes, working his jaw. A muscle under his eye twitched. His too-long hair stirred in a breeze that felt like mercy upon her heated, sweaty body.

“Can I?” 

The question was low, barely audible. It was a plea for reassurance; Rey could hear and see that plainly. She could smell his need in the breeze.

“Yes, Kylo. You can,” she told him, sounding certain, feeling certain.

Hands lowered, he drew close, then crouched down, taking hold of the top of the post. She grabbed its middle. Together, they straightened it, and Kylo held it upright while she filled in the hole around it with wet clay and sand. When she darted a glance up at his face, she found he was smiling softly at her. She grinned back, before returning her focus to her task.

Thus, in tandem, in silence, in understanding, they toiled on.

. . . 

A routine began to emerge, one of bringing him coffee in the mornings and dandelion wine in the evenings; in exchange, he provided his rocking chairs and his porch and a steady stream of conversation whenever she faltered and grew silent. Together they watched the ever-later sunrise and the ever-earlier sunset and they discussed easy, superficial topics.

The weather. The almanac. Her crops, plans for what he might take from her garden to sow in his own, come Autumn. The animals around them—the deer, the bison, the foxes and wolves. The wild plants, and which might be of use to them. Her ideas for her own house, and how best to dig out underneath for the construction of a root cellar. Practical needs they would have to address in the coming years—how to turn the cotton yields into thread and then fabric, how to process the oats and grains, how to smoke or pickle or preserve the meat they were hunting, the vegetables they were growing, in preparation for the winter.

Neutral topics, logistical puzzles. Nothing deep. Nothing painful. But there was an undercurrent to these talks; they were learning each other, in a safer way than they had before.

Soon enough, these exchanges became the highlight of her days. 

. . .

“Did you ever ride in an automobile?” she asked him out of the blue one afternoon. It was a sultry day; having given up on laboring, they were seated on the sands of the spring, their bare feet in its mucky shallows. “Before the Catastrophe, I mean.”

She was trying very hard not to think of that one time they’d taken their tea together in almost the same spot, and what had occurred after.

The look he gave her was briefly one of puzzlement before it softened to warm amusement. “Yes.”

“What was it like? I… I never did.”

“Bumpy,” he said, squinting against the dazzling sunlight reflected on the spring waters. “Damn near rattled my teeth out of my head.”

“And an aeroplane? You told me you flew in one, during the war. What was that like?”

“Also bumpy. But from the air instead of the ground. Nearly lost my lunch.”

“I should have liked to,” she sighed. “Ride in either, I mean.”

Her voice was wistful; she didn’t bother hiding it.

“Hm.” He kicked at the water; together they watched the ripples roll away, along the calm surface. “They’re still around, automobiles—mostly in the cities. Rusting away in the garages of the wealthy. You could have one.”

“No cities.”

“I’d fetch it for you.”

“Don’t go to the cities anymore, Kylo,” she said, in a tone both soft and stern.

He tilted his head to study her. After a moment, he murmured, “What happened in London, Rey?”

The water was silvery and navy by turns, shimmering, clean. Not like London had been. Nothing about Jakku was like London and for that she was grateful.

“Bombings,” she mustered. “The Lover’s Death. Alphic gas—Alphas. And…” she floundered, unsure if she could say the words aloud. But it felt important, to speak them aloud. And she wanted him to understand. “I lo—lost Dosmit.”

That was enough; she could tell he understood because he scowled, squinting again as he looked away.

“S’pose it would be difficult for anyone who’d lived through that to feel safe again.”

Rey shrugged.

Under his breath, he ground out, “If I could, I’d burn that city to the ground for you.”

It was funny, for some reason. The chivalry, the clumsy conception of justice. London had already been burned to the ground and it hadn’t been for her. But why _ had _it been done? Time truly was a panacea; when she wracked her brain, Rey found the pain from that era of her life to be much hazier and distant that she’d expected. She could not help but laugh at the absurdity of it all; then, looking at his confused expression, the laughter intensified, until tears rolled down her cheeks and her side ached. She fell back into the sand, gasping, unable to stop now that she’d started.

Kylo frowned down at her. But she could not help it. She was alive. She’d survived London, survived the loss of Dosmit, survived the journey, survived her heats, survived her very biology, survived Jakku, survived _ Kylo_. And he’d survived her as well. Here they were, on the other side. Together, maybe.

On and on she laughed, high-pitched and breathless.

At length, a smile cracked his face, baring his crooked teeth. He shook his head at her. Then he began to laugh as well.

. . .

“Sister Dosmit’s death was not your fault,” said Kylo out of the blue one day, speaking in a slow and careful cadence. She was seated upon her porch, feet bare, in nothing but the chemise he’d given her long ago, as the day was sweltering. She’d been reading the almanac before he approached, carrying his hat in his hands. Now she let it drop into her lap.

All was still in the heat of the day; his words seemed to ring on in the air. He wasn’t usually so abrupt as this, and she found herself at a loss, for this was the very forgiveness she’d been trying so hard to grant herself since he left. Before that, even. Since the moment Maz descended the stairs from the attic and broke the news of Dosmit’s passing.

“Then whose fault was it?” she returned, voice breaking.

Kylo shook his head. “Someone long gone, far away. The ones who created…” his gaze swept over the land, “—all of this.”

“I didn’t go to her before the end. I let her die alone,” said Rey, studying her feet. There were places where they were scarred, from her boots rubbing against them until they bled and healed and bled again. They were ugly. And they always would be; she would never have the dainty, pretty feet of a pampered omegan lady.

Even the chemise had become pilled, its sheen diminished from being scrubbed on the rough washboard and dried on the line time and time again. She’d always had a lean frame, but she had put weight back on since last winter, the result of sleep and rest and that blessed general store’s wares, the combined effect enough that she had a little softness about her belly and breasts, though her arms and legs were still ropy with muscle.

She would never be anything dainty or pretty or pampered. That was not to be. That had never been the path for her. Not in the world that had passed, and not in the one that remained.

But then, Dosmit had not been dainty or pretty or pampered, yet she had still seemed able to find happiness in her life. And the places where her feet had been scarred—were they not stronger there, the skin tougher than before?

Still, Rey frowned at them, then at him. “I _ made _ her, Kylo. I made her die _ alone_.”

“I know something about that.”

“Leia had the resistance. And… I think she still had hope. For you.”

“You think Dosmit didn’t?”

“What is worse?” she mused, turning her feet this way and that, reconciling herself to their ugliness. Finding a strange beauty in it, perhaps. “To know the person that you failed died still believing in you, or that they gave up on you before the end?”

Kylo went without speaking for so long that she finally tore her eyes from her feet and sought out his gaze. He was somber, blinking rapidly, and quickly looked away from her, hiding his face, but Rey saw it anyway; his cheeks were wet.

“I don’t know,” he said at last. His voice was rough, throaty. Clogged by tears. “But Dosmit knew you loved her. I know _ that_.”

“I was so sure _ you’d _given up on me,” she whispered, through her own tears. That drew his attention. Clearing his throat, wiping his face, he turned back to her.

“And I you.”

“Did I fail you, Kylo?”

“No more than I failed you,” he replied. “We both heard only what we wanted to hear. Needed to hear, maybe.”

Rey nodded. “I’m listening now.”

At that, he huffed a wet laugh. “As it so happens, I’ve run out of things to say. For the time being.”

“That’s alright,” she said. She reached for his hand and he ceded it readily, returning the squeeze she offered with his one of his own. “For you, I don’t mind waiting.”

. . .

On the day of the week she had designated as Sunday, she would go to the cemetery, to place fresh wildflowers on her parents’ grave. It was another ritual of hers, one she’d started after she’d accepted that there was more living to be done in this world and decided that she was willing to do it.

On this particular Sunday, he was already there in the cemetery when she arrived, seated at the foot of his own parent’s grave. He was staring hard at the mound of earth. Grass had begun to grow upon it.

“Kylo,” she said mutedly, by way of greeting. Circumventing him, she rested the new bouquet against her parents’ headstone, then removed the faded one.

“Didn’t get to say goodbye,” he said.

The way he said it, it sounded like a recrimination that had been eating at him for some time. She stared first at her parents’ names, then at the makeshift wooden cross he’d hammered together for Leia, then at him.

“I never got to say hello,” she replied, at length.

His face fell, like she’d physically hurt him. “Sometimes, I—” His voice broke, and he went silent. She waited patiently, dropping to the ground next to him. “Never mind,” was all he came up with.

But her curiosity would not abide that; for too long, they’d left things untouched between themselves.

“No, what?”

“No—no.” He shook his head. “It’s… it’s my burden to carry, not yours.”

“Something about your mother?” she prompted. “About Captain Han Solo?”

“What did you think of him?”

“Gruff,” she answered. “But a heart of gold. A good man.”

He nodded wistfully. “You’re probably right.”

“Is that the burden?”

“No,” he said, still staring at the mound of dirt that lay upon his mother.

“Is it your grandfather? Anakin?”

Kylo startled. “How did you…”

“Saint Padmé was married to him,” said Rey. “Can’t believe I forgot that, really. And of course, we had to memorize the story of her life, when I was a girl. One evening I was saying my prayers and it occurred to me—she’d had children. Twins. An alphic girl and a Beta boy. Their names came back to me, and I… I wondered why you didn’t tell me.”

“Ashamed, I guess.” One of his broad shoulders twitched, a dejected shrug.

“I know something about that,” she offered. Then, when he remained quiet, she tried, “Is it… _ me_? Am I the burden?”

“I’m sorry,” he choked out.

“No, Kylo.” She reached for him; she was not trying to hurt him, yet she could not seem to help it. “I—”

“What I want—what I _ wanted_,” he said, “the things I wanted from you, that’s not what you want. It’s your life to do with as you please. I’m not your Alpha. I regret…” He broke off, overcome.

“Me, too,” she said, eagerly, the words rushing forth. “I have regrets, too.”

“So. I won’t be repeating that mistake, at least—expecting those things from you that were so repellent—”

“Kylo—” 

“Rey, it was my mistake.” He shook his head. “I see that now. Each of us, our life is our own. Whatever’s left of it.”

She laid her hand on his shoulder, grasping gently, to keep his attention. “I was… I’ve had a lot of time to think.”

He blinked at her.

“I’m glad you came back. The way we ended things… I… I’m glad I’m able to speak to you again. Even if… even if you’ve got nothing to say at the moment.”

“Something in particular _ you _wanted to say?” he asked, beseeching.

Rey drew a deep breath. “I said you couldn’t make me happy. I’ve given it a lot of thought and in truth, I don’t… I don’t think I knew what would make me happy, when I said it. Maybe nothing in the world could have. So now I find that I can’t say for certain it _ isn’t _you.”

His face lit up, but he kept himself very still. “I see.”

“I was too hasty in saying say so, perhaps.”

“You’d had plenty of time to decide,” he countered. “Maybe you were right.”

“A person can decide a thing without giving it proper consideration, though. She can decide something without thinking about it at all, in fact. Refusing to even consider it properly. Not wanting to. Not… being able to. When the thing is very painful, you see. When she is… in too much pain, herself.”

He took his own deep breath; Rey watched, enthralled, as his broad chest rose and fell. He took a moment, appearing to work up his nerve. Then: “Did you… think about me? While I was gone?”

“Did you?” she demurred, wanting to take that step and still not quite ready, needing him to leap first.

Padmé bless him, he did. For Rey, he always did. 

“Every day,” he said. “Every damn day.”

“Me…” she tried, strangled, before trying again. “Me, too.”

“Well.” Shuddering, he let that deep breath out. Under her hand, his shoulder trembled slightly. “Well, then,” he repeated, and for some reason, it didn’t feel like a conclusion.

It felt like a beginning.

. . .

He was never anything less than polite, respectful. From time to time, she caught him opening his mouth, like he wanted to say something, but it would abruptly snap shut and whatever he’d been about to say would remain trapped within.

She thought about those trapped words quite often.

Her summer heat came in the dog days of what might’ve been August; it certainly felt hot enough to be August. Rey rode it out by herself, in her bedroom, with her hands and a pillow, sweating and coming and gasping in equal measure.

She wanted to call to him. She wanted his body on top of hers, wanted him to fuck her and then hold her afterwards.

Wanted it so bad she cried.

But she stayed in her bedroom, alone, until it passed. Because she thought she might love him, or might come to love him, and what she wanted with him was a communion of souls, of bodies freely given and freely received. Not a union dictated by hormones but one of love, of trust. Like it had been that final morning, before she’d detonated the fragile beginnings of their bond—when it had been slow and gentle, tangled up in each other, belly-to-belly, heart-to-heart. Not heat, not rut. Just them.

And for that to happen, she needed more time.

To his credit, not once did Kylo intrude upon her privacy.

However, it was clear to her, from the hungry, sidelong glances he stole once she finally emerged from her home a few days later, freshly bathed and once again with her wits about her, that he knew exactly where she’d been and what she’d been doing.

He did not offer any commentary upon the subject.

. . .

The days were growing cool again. Her crops had been harvested and processed, preserved, stored—a meager yield, really, but quite impressive for a first year and a fledgling farmer, or so Rey felt. The earth had been tilled. Kylo had helped her with the work; together, they had managed to reap the entire garden’s worth of vegetables and grains in a week’s time. Soon they would need to plant next year’s crop, but for a few days, they’d decided, there would be rest.

It was a fine, crisp morning. The clear blue sky was brilliant through her bedroom window, but Rey was lazing in bed, eyes closed, entertaining a lascivious daydream featuring Kylo and herself, when she heard a great hubbub upon the road the likes of which she had never heard before.

Grabbing her flannel dressing gown and the soft antelope-hide slippers Kylo had made for her, she dashed to the front window and peered out through the warped glass. Mottled shapes, angular and organic, were rolling in through the town, making all manner of noise, animal and human and mechanical. And, above all of them, were a few voices that were unmistakable.

In surprise and wonder, Rey clapped her hand over her mouth. She shuffled out her front door and onto the porch, staring at the scene before her.

People. At least three dozen of them, laughing and whistling and calling out to one another, unloading a train of wagons stocked high with apple crates and furniture and weapons and a biblical arc’s worth of animals.

And among those people were Rose and Finn and Poe, bustling about, directing the flow of goods into the ramshackle homes. Now one or the other of the three were running off to help carry this and that, now they had regrouped, huddling with their heads together, pointing off in the distance, clearly making plans for the rolling prairie and fallow farmland around Jakku.

“Hello?” she called out, self-conscious suddenly in only her chemise and robe, feeling adrift in the face of so much action, so many people, so much noise, after so long with only the flora, the fauna, and Kylo as company.

“Rey!” Rose hurtled forth and was upon her before she could even react, pulling her into a bone-crushing hug. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes!”

“What—what’s going…”

“We’d heard so much talk of Jakku and how wonderful things were down this way,” said Finn, from the road, “That we decided—after a vote, of course—to come on down and see for ourselves!”

Again, Rey looked about at the hustle and bustle, at the laughing, happy people moving into Jakku. Her Jakku. She couldn’t make any sense of it, nor her own emotions. Was it… was it happiness? She thought it might be. Something lightweight and elusive was bubbling up within her chest.

It was then that she spotted him, leaning against the wall of his house, gaze fixed upon her. Kylo had been standing guard, watching all of this unfold; but now, it seemed, she had his full attention. She raised her eyebrows at him. He nodded, like he’d ordered this up for her, like it came as no surprise at all to him.

Something else pinged within her. A twinge, something painful. Wistfulness, perhaps, that it would not be just the two of them anymore.

No, that was absurd, surely. The Resistance were good people and Rey was glad they had come. Glad they would help her bring life back to Jakku. It couldn’t be any more complicated than that.

Confused by the scene in front of her, by its implications for the future, and by her own response to it, all Rey could manage was a nod in his direction.

. . .

“It was Kylo, actually,” said Rose to Rey, once they were seated on the squat stools in her kitchen, some hours later.

Rey took a long sip of her hot toddy, mulling over those words. Rose did the same, humming contentedly at the warm mixture of whiskey and tea.

“How so?” asked Rey, at length.

Rose’s smile was canny. “You know he came back? To the Hollow?”

She nodded. “I saw the body—Leia is buried here, in the cemetery.”

“Hm.” Rose pursed her lips in contemplation. “Have to say, I’m a bit surprised he was telling the truth ‘bout that. We voted to trust him—his information on the First Order’s fortress proved true, helped us win our offensive against them, but…”

Rey could feel her brow puckering, her lips pulling down into a frown, as she processed that influx of information.

There’d been an offensive.

Kylo had… helped?

Had he fought with them?

Had he been injured? She’d noticed no new scars in the time since he’d returned.

What _ had _happened while he’d been away?

She felt loaded down with a thousand more questions than when she’d awoken that morning.

“But?” she prompted.

“Kinda assumed he was lyin’, to be honest,” said Rose.

“I’ve made that mistake as well,” she replied, nodding.

Rose barked out a sharp laugh. “He didn’t tell you any of this?”

“Not a word.”

“Well.” Rose took a long swallow of her hot toddy. “He wouldn’t join the fight with us—somethin’ ‘bout being tired. Pfft. As if we all aren’t? But as I said, the intel he gave us was good. So we let him keep his head, and let him do what he said he’d come to do—take his mother to be buried. Decided it was what Leia would’a wanted. That couldn't-a been his original purpose, though. How could he have known that, before he got to Illinois?”

Rey chewed on that puzzle for a moment. If he hadn’t known Leia was gone, why would he have gone to the Resistance?

The answer, when it came to her, was suffocating in its horror, for it must have been the very same reason she had gone to Jakku.

He’d given up. 

He’d gone there knowing full well it might spell his death. But he had wanted to go home; to a home that was gone, that could never be.

Tears welled in her eyes; a sharp, hot pain twisted itself into her lungs, and every breath she attempted got caught in her throat from the agony of it. That, she had done. She had pushed him to that edge.

The terrible.

It had been _ her_.

“Hey,” said Rose, snatching up her hand, gently rubbing her thumb along the back. “Hey, now, Rey. Easy. ‘S’alright. You’re alright.”

“Is it?” she squeaked. “He’s not a good man, is he, Rose?”

Rose pressed her lips together and continued rubbing her thumb across Rey’s hand. Rey let her head droop for a moment, feeling depleted.

“I hardly know what good and bad are anymore,” she muttered to herself, gripping Rose’s hand tightly. “I don’t think I’m very good, either.”

“Where’s your kin, Rey?”

The question was sharp. It punctured her spiraling mania; she glanced up again to see Rose’s eyes narrowing in understanding.

“Gone,” she said simply, the only word she could get out.

“For how long?” Rose pressed.

Rey shook her head, her breathing hitched. It hurt, oh, how it hurt. To speak the truth was to make it real, to accept it.

“Rey.”

“Always,” she sobbed, the pain spilling over. “They were always gone, Rose.”

“Oh.” Rose rushed around the table, throwing her arms around Rey’s shoulder, accepting her weight when Rey collapsed against her, still crying. “Oh, _ Rey_.”

. . .

“Tell me all of it,” Rey mumbled, when her tears subsided and she’d collected herself. She reached for the apron hanging from a hook and dried her face with it, then blew her nose in its corner.

“All of it,” repeated Rose, with a thoughtful air. She pushed up from her crouched position, reclaiming her seat on the stool kitty-corner to Rey’s. “Well, let’s see. Leia passed, and there was a bit of chaos. Poe was our unofficial leader, but in truth, Finn and I were just as close to Leia as he was. Things got… a bit complicated. With our, er…”

“Arrangement?”

At that, Rose let out a relieved giggle. “Yes, I suppose that’s as good a word as any. Our arrangement. We decided to lead as a council, eventually. And to make all future decisions by vote, like a true democracy.”

“So you decided to take down the First Order,” said Rey.

“Damn right we did. And then we succeeded—with a little assistance from Kylo Ren.”

Rey sighed. “Wish I could’ve seen that.”

“I’ll tell you, Rey—when we had him up against the wall, I thought he was going to faint.” Rose offered her a rueful smile. “Thought maybe he was gonna do our job for us, expire from exhaustion and dejection on our doorstep.”

She could see it, how tired he must have been, how deadened, how heartbroken. That had been her doing. The image was like the twisting of a knife inserted right beneath her bottom rib.

“You chose mercy,” she observed, proud that her voice shook only a little. It was more than she had offered him.

“We chose intel,” countered Rose. “Over revenge. Though I guess it was mercy, seeing as we didn’t decide on having both.”

Rey shook her head, insistent on this point. “It was good of you. It was forgiveness.”

“Guess it was,” said Rose, with a heavy sigh of her own. “Anyways, after we’d liberated the fortress, we were all standing around twiddling our thumbs, not sure what to do with ourselves. None of us were too excited about the idea of living out the rest of our lives in a damned cave. And life ain’t getting any easier up north.”

“The winters.”

“Precisely.” Rose’s lips quirked. “So we thought about you down here, and… striking out to Jakku seemed as good a plan as any other.” 

“And here you are,” said Rey, grinning back at her.

And meaning it, too. She had been reminded, even just in the course of this heavy conversation with Rose, how much she liked the woman, how well they got on, despite being unmated Alpha and Omega. 

But there was something else, too… Rose’s scent was different than it had been the last time they’d met.

Drastically different. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed it right away. It was only her shock, she supposed, that had kept her from smelling it. And the melange of other scents the Resistance had brought with them as they rolled into town. Rey sniffed the air now. The change was so blatantly obvious to her, she couldn’t help her curiosity.

Rose smelled… lush. Earthy. Flowery. A summer garden after a warm rain. A bowl of fresh-picked strawberries. A wild thatch of honeysuckle by the side of the road.

“Rose…” she began, hesitantly, “Are you…”

Rose’s smile turned coy. “Mmhmm,” she hummed, resting her hand on her belly. “Few months along, I reckon.”

“But… but…” sputtered Rey. “I—I—I thought they said alphic women…”

“Couldn’t conceive?” Rose waved her hand in the air, as if to dispel the thought. “What the hell did those scientists know, anyway? Not a damn thing, if you ask me. Leia brought a child into this world, didn’t she?”

Rey gasped. Of course Leia had. How many others defied the rules scientists had created? She thought of Padmé, Leia’s mother, and wondered if perhaps the Saint had not been herself an Alpha. “They were wrong. They were wrong about that.”

_ The miraculous. _

“Probably other things, too,” scoffed Rose. “Who knows? It was a new science, wasn’t it? Any case, we’re the ones left now—so we’re the ones who have to figure it out.”

“Yes,” Rey agreed. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“And here in Jakku, it’s… perfect. We’ll be good here, I think. We got everything we need.”

Rey nodded, relieved beyond measure, giddy with happiness. “The land is good, Rose. Really good. Fertile. Good clime, too. Mild winters and long rainy springs.”

“…I was talking about the people,” said Rose, with a puzzled look. “But I—I take your meaning, all the same.” 

“Right.” She gave a sheep-faced nod, blushing so fiercely her cheeks burned as she considered the people. One person, in particular. “The people. I—right.”

To that, Rose arched a dark brow, failing to restrain her smirk. Then, with an air of feigned obliviousness, she redirected the conversation towards more practical matters.

Rey felt a wave of gratitude wash over her, to have a friend such as Rose back in her life.

. . .

The Resistance quickly organized themselves, then embarked upon the colossal project of setting the town to rights. The sound of hammers and saws rang out in Jakku throughout the weeks that followed. 

Meetings were arranged to discuss agriculture, and politics, and living arrangements, and new construction, and a dozen other logistical details of settling down somewhere. They were held in the dilapidated chapel, the only place big enough to accommodate all of them. Rey attended every meeting, but she did not sit in the pews; she stood leaning at the back of the church, and merely listened as the Resistance—no longer needing to resist—decided how they would build the new world.

Their ideas were just, and good, and fair. She felt no need to interject; she agreed with them readily. It would be a fine world they’d build. One that did not assign a value based on designation; one in which everyone had a place based on what they wanted for themselves, not what was decided upon _ for _ them.

Kylo attended, too. He also held his tongue, only listening, never sitting in the pew, but leaning against the same wall as Rey, on the other side of the chapel’s entrance.

Their eyes met often.

Rey would smile shyly at him, glad of heart that he had come back for her, and aching, heartsick over the journey he had taken—and that no one had come back for _ him_.

But Rey was here now.

With her smiles, she tried to tell him: _ I will come back for you. _

. . . 

For a time, after the Resistance moved in and the great revitalization effort was underway, Rey saw much less of Kylo. She might even hazard to guess that he was avoiding her.

Was he angry that she’d welcomed them into their town, into their private little world?

No. He went to their meetings, he labored alongside them, he returned her shy smiles.

_ What was it? _

Why did he stay away? Why was he no longer on his porch at dawn or dusk, ready to receive her proffered beverage, that tepid excuse she’d created to spend time with him?

Rey hardly saw him except for coming and going, working with others, listening quietly to the neverending stream of conversation that now flowed through Jakku.

She couldn’t figure out where or how to insert herself. So her questions festered into doubts. 

For a time.

. . .

One of the first projects for the Resistance, once the most necessary of the repairs had been accomplished, and the effort to prepare themselves for winter was humming along nicely, was to build a great pavilion down by the banks of the spring, where the air was always fresh and the acoustics were just right. After it was constructed, smelling of freshly chopped oak and pine, they began a tradition of Saturday evening hootanannys.

Rey did not attend, though she was always invited. 

She wasn’t sure why, but the truth was that she didn’t feel quite a part of the Resistance. Perhaps it was that she hadn’t fought the same battles as them; it felt like she hadn’t fought any battle at all, save for the one she’d waged against herself. And the one she’d fought against Kylo, despite his wishes.

Those days were behind them, but the subtle feeling of being on the outside remained.

It wasn’t a great tragedy for her. She liked to sit out on her porch, not attending, just sipping on something as she listened to the music and the laughter and the giddy, joyous chatter. It was a different kind of loneliness, but an easier one.

From time to time, she watched Kylo pass by her house with a tip of his hat to her, on his way to the festivities.

One such Saturday, though, he sat out on his own porch, cleaning his guns. Then when he finished that, he brought out a hunk of gnarled wood, and took to whittling. When he noticed Rey staring at him from her own porch, he raised his glass to her.

It was not the invitation she was hoping for, so she merely raised hers back.

Another ritual was formed; so much less than what she wanted.

. . .

The trees whose leaves were affected by the onset of Autumn were all wearing their most resplendent gold and ruby and topaz when the divide that had been opened between Rey and Kylo was finally bridged.

It was late afternoon and he was loitering on the porch of the saloon, now furnished with chairs and benches for its customers; Finn had, after much discussion, assumed responsibility of its repair and upkeep. Lilting piano music drifted out through its swinging doors and open windows.

Rey peeked out at them all from behind the potato-sack curtain she’d hung over her own parlor window, to give herself a little privacy. It was strange to need such a thing after so long on her own, but sort of nice, too. She was reminded of that wild fantasy she’d had of walking down Jakku’s one and only road in the nude, with a cow bell around her neck, to summon Kylo.

The reception might be something altogether different if she tried that now.

She could see him clearly. His hair was washed, wet, neatly combed back, displaying a feature she only vaguely remembered through the euphoria of her heat—his ears. They were prominent and, as the men gathered on the porch spoke to one another, Rey could not help but notice that they glowed scarlet. As though he were embarrassed; as though they were winding him up.

She had half a mind to stomp over there and give them the what-for.

But something stopped her. Maybe it was his attire. He was wearing the only set of clothes he owned besides the roughspun trousers and shirt he’d arrived in: a pinstripe suit, perhaps given to him by the Resistance, perhaps scavenged by a nearby town. Rey had never seen him wear it before. There was an accompanying waistcoat and tie. The whole thing fit him surprisingly well, considering what a big man he was.

He looked rather dashing, she thought. Aristocratic, even.

Some of the men gathered around him were drinking homemade hooch, others weren’t. Rey peered at him closely through the tiny gap in the curtains: he was abstaining. The burbling conversation continued until, all of a sudden, it boiled over into a bawdy uproar of masculine laughter, deep, guffawing, some of them reaching over to slap Kylo on the shoulder.

His expression screamed out his discomfort. But also, she thought, there was a hint of enjoyment in how he rocked back onto his heels, shoulders twitching, hands in his pockets. Like maybe he didn’t entirely mind a little teasing from his new friends. A moment later, he wheeled round, mouth set in a determined line. His dark eyes were directed straight ahead.

At Rey’s front door.

She held her breath, watching as he stomped down the saloon steps, across the road, and up onto her porch.

Then there was a long silence.

What was he _ doing_?

Why didn’t he knock?

Was he just… standing there, gathering wool?

Exasperated, Rey stalked over to the door and threw it open. Kylo’s eyes went round and his jaw dropped. He looked as though he’d been interrupted, as though he’d been… preparing for something. His hat was clenched in his fists; his heavy brow was creased.

“Ma’am,” he said at last, doing an awkward little half-bow.

It took every ounce of her self-restraint not to laugh at him, but his awkwardness was a compliment to her, so despite her bemusement, she held a straight face.

“Ma’am?” she asked. Then: “Hello, Kylo.”

He gave a heavy sigh. “Evening, Rey.”

“I’ve been thinking,” she said, as she leaned against the door jamb. It brought her close to him, the tips of her boots nearly touching his. She leveled a reproachful glare across the way, and the men all hurried to appear as though they had not been watching.

Kylo tilted his head at her. In response to her lean, he swayed closer, close enough that her senses were full of his scent and he blocked out everything else with his broad torso and earnest face.

It was time, she decided, right there and then. He had come back for her again and again. Now was the moment to return the favor.

“Maybe…” she looked down at their boots, then back to him, “you could call me Henrietta, if you liked.”

He huffed out a nervous noise; if he wasn’t careful, he was going to tear his hat, with the way gripped it so tightly by its brim.

“Hen—ri—etta,” he said, slow. Trying it out.

She nodded, satisfied.

“I’d—I’d like to ask you to go for a walk with me.” His deep voice wavered slightly, but he soldiered on: “Watch the sun go down.”

Rey felt the urge to scoff. He said it as though watching the sun go down wasn’t something they’d been doing every day for weeks before the Resistance had showed up. But their arrival _ had _changed things, she supposed. Changed the town, changed the nature of the life they would lead here. Where did they stand, now? Who were they to each other?

All this, she let pass. She merely shot back: “Then why don’t you? Ask me?”

A grin, boyish and earnest. “Might be I’ve got a case of the nerves.”

She nodded again, affecting a tone both solemn and teasing. “Nerves are a terrible thing. You might be looking at something good, something you think you want, ready to reach out, take it… then you blink, and your nerves freeze you where you’re standing. They make it so a soul can’t find a moment’s peace.”

“All true,” he breathed.

“I think you were right about me,” she said, in a whisper.

“Was I?”

“I _ am _a liar,” she declared.

He winced, chagrined, and shook his head. “No—”

“I’ve realized I—I do believe in second chances,” she rushed out. “I _ want _ to believe in them. I want to believe that something—some _ one_—can come back.”

For a moment, he only stared at her, something like rapture in his countenance. He twisted his hat in his hands. His chest rose and fell with each unsteady, hitched breath. Then:

“Take a stroll with me… Henrietta?”

His voice wasn’t much more than a low murmur. Cocking her head, Rey waited, and after a fraught moment, he offered up his arm for her to hold onto, should she so choose.

What _ did _she choose? Death, exile, or a third option? Surely there was something between wayfaring stranger and subjugated Omega?

Could there be an ever after, for her and him? 

The distance between the inside of her house and the outside world was, at that moment, so much more than just a couple inches. It was, she felt, moving between what had come before and what would come next. It meant forgiveness, it meant trying again.

It meant living in this world. With him.

It meant coming back for him, at last.

She nodded. Then she took his arm and stepped over the threshold.

. . .

“Autumn’s nice in these parts,” he remarked, when they’d passed out of earshot of the saloon. 

“Mm.”

“Jannah says she’s planning an orchard north of the rails. Somewhere down the line, we could have apple cider and pie.”

“I’ve never tasted either of those,” she replied, leaning on his arm a little more than was necessary. He took her weight like it was nothing and kept them walking at a steady pace towards the waterside.

“I’ll see that you get some.”

“Is that what you wanted to speak to me about? Apples?” She shot him a grin. He swallowed hard.

“Beautiful sunset.”

“_Kylo_.”

“Ben,” he whispered.

That halted Rey’s steps. “Come again?”

The last time he’d asked her to call him that had been in the middle of their ill-fated assignation. Memories of his hands on her were both dear and painful, but what was more, it reminded her of how she’d used his other name to wound him, after.

He turned to her, half of his face shadowed in the slanted light. “If you can be Henrietta to me, couldn’t I be…”

“Ah,” she murmured. “You said once that you knew me, when I told you no one did. Do you remember?”

“You disagreed, as I recall.”

“But if you are Benjamin—truly Benjamin, to God and sundry—and I am Henrietta, then… we’d have to start all over.” She squeezed his arm lightly. “From scratch. We’d have to learn each other anew.”

He glanced off towards the western horizon. The wind made dark locks of his hair sweep across his face. Rey followed his gaze; together they watched the sun gild the tips of the galloping waves.

“Autumn is my favorite season,” he said. “Things die, but it’s never made me sad. Feels… normal. Doesn’t have to be a tragedy—just part of life.”

“Never cared for it in London,” she said. “Terribly dreary. Here, though, I… I rather like it.”

“Not quite so sad, here.”

She rested her head against his bicep. “S’pose not.”

A peaceful moment passed, the two of them leaning on each other, watching the last of the afternoon slip away.

“Another season—another heat.”

It was the quietest she’d ever heard him speak. No more than a thrown away mumble. And when he glanced at her, it was leery. Wounded. Like he was afraid of her. Rey’s breath caught in her throat. Try as he might to hide it, that glance gave the whole game away. She could see it now, and moreover, she could smell it, that spike of need, of hunger.

He _ wanted _her. Still. After everything, he still wanted her.

“What about it?” she managed, pulling away slightly so she could get a better look at him.

He cleared his throat. “Nothing—never mind. I—sorry.”

“Ben—” 

“Only… if you need anything,” he blurted, “Rags or… or food or whiskey or—blankets for nesting, hell, Henrietta, I don’t know, I just…” She shook her head, ready to interject, but he rambled on: “I wouldn’t presume. Not with you. You don’t need an Alpha. Tried to stay away so you could find someone else—now you have choices—let you live your life how you want, but… I just want to make it easier. Better. Can’t help that.”

“That is very thoughtful of you, _ Ben_,” she said gently.

He took a step closer, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to hold his gaze.

“You’ll let me know, then?”

“Yes. I’ll think on it a while.” She reached up to cup his scarred cheek in her palm. His eyes sank shut at the contact and he pressed closer against her hand, nuzzling like a lonesome tomcat. “And I’ll let you know.”

  
  


_ Late Autumn 1921 _

One day, Rey stepped out onto her porch to find the sun already vanished beneath the western fields, and the sky above was the softest blend of tangerine up to lilac up to a pale, delicate pink at the top of the sky. The evening was mild. Trees dotting the landscape and fields of high grasses—rendered black silhouettes against the sunset—swayed in a breeze that wicked the sweat off her neck and played with the loose tendrils of hair curling around her face.

The glass of cold ale in her hand was sweating. She stole a sip of it, though she had her own inside.

That morning, she’d decided it was time to tackle the task of fixing up her house.

Her trousers and shirt were caked with dust and dirt from sweeping and scrubbing. Her fingernails were dark, cracked crescents of black. Her back and knees ached from the hours she had spent sanding down the plancheon floorboards.

But the delia pavorums she’d planted in the summer—a gift from Rose, who’d brought all manner of bulbs with her from Illinois—were blooming beautifully along the sides of her porch, great drowsy clusters of marigold and magenta and amber. They danced in the breeze too, their variegated faces bent in the direction of the fading sunlight.

_ The terrible and the miraculous. _

She felt at peace. She felt _ hopeful_. Who knew what was to come? What her destiny might hold?

Maybe nothing. Maybe just the quiet, guttural sputtering of a machine on its last legs. The sound of grinding cogs slowing to a halt or the howling of a wind that had no more faces to caress. The bleating of animals born to be the last of their species.

She knew this much: whatever her future was, it had not been written on the twenty-fourth pair of her chromosomes. Life would weave onwards in its winding path and she would follow or diverge as she pleased, but the reins would stay in her hands. 

In Jakku, no one called her ‘Omega’ and no one asked her to do anything that they were not themselves doing.

So for now, there was this.

And besides, Rey didn’t think on things with quite so much doom and gloom anymore. The end of the world had come, and it had been terrible. She had done terrible things; everyone had. It had taken everything from her. But also… it hadn’t.

It was the end of an era, the end of a way of life that had led to utter decimation, yet still things went on. Life went on. There were plenty of people who went on.

So Rey would too.

From beside her, she heard a throat clear itself. She turned her head and smiled fondly.

Ben Solo was nearly finished painting her shutters a bright cheery yellow, a fitting match for her royal blue door.

“That for me?” he asked.

“Mmhmm,” she hummed as she passed the glass of ale to him. And if it was with perhaps a bit too much interest that she watched the cords of this throat shift while he swallowed, there was no one around at the moment to be the wiser.

“You really don’t _ have _to do that,” she told him, gesturing towards the shutter.

He paused, studying his work. “No, I don’t.” His eyes slid up to meet hers. “But it looks nice, doesn’t it?”

Her lips twitched. “It does.”

“Makes you happy?”

“It… does.”

He gave a soft, triumphant snort to himself and took another long swallow, finishing the drink. “Well, then.”

She smiled at him as she took the glass back, then turned to go inside.

“Hey, Henrietta,” he called to her. His tone was amiable. When she swiveled back, he was leaning casually against the newly-constructed balustrade of her porch. He’d built it himself, with a little help from some of the Resistance.

“Yes, Benjamin?” she asked, with an equally breezy air.

That’s where they were at these days. There was a shy playfulness to the way they treated each other; it was a world apart from last winter.

“There’s… a dance. Well, a hootananny. But there’ll be dancing. In the pavilion.” He jerked his head towards the lake. “On Saturday.”

“I’m well aware,” she laughed; she knew damned well that _ he _ already knew that _ she _knew. And sensing where this was headed, she found herself unafraid. Ready. Eager, even. “There always is. And it’s a rather small town, you know.”

He shrugged. “Was thinking I might attend.”

“I see.”

“Not much of a dancer.”

“I’m sure you can manage,” she teased.

“Do you want…” He coughed, then tried again, “You think you might be there?”

He had not always been a good man. What did that mean? That he was nothing to her? That he had no soul, no capacity to grow? She had not always been a good woman. He knew the emptiness of despair. So did she. But she also knew, just like he did, what it was to want another chance, to rewrite the pages of history, to do better. And it was nice not to be alone, nicer than she ever could have imagined. 

Not just not alone—but wanted, and finding in herself the capacity to want in return. 

To love without reserve, maybe, someday.

Would they ride out the end of days together on just this nice camaraderie, being more than the sum of their parts? Would they steal a freighter and sail around the world, and be lost to the endless blue sea?

She could see it.

Or maybe they could just erect a new windmill, working together, side by side, four capable hands and two energetic minds leading their fellows back towards modernity, but different this time, their own version of modernity, something more humane, something gentler. That idea appealed to her too.

They could stay right where they were and plait their lives together. No more lies.

Rey liked that notion most of all. And what was more, she thought: maybe they could ascend the old ideas about Alpha and Omega, or man and wife. 

A third option: partners. Equals.

She’d like a partner, someone to speak with, someone to sleep beside, someone with whom she took her meals and passed her quiet hours. Someone alongside whom she might navigate the dance between the terrible and the miraculous. More and more these days, she found herself wanting not just _any_ partner. Now Jakku was bustling, expanding even, and Benjamin Solo was not the only other soul around, nor the only one who’d expressed an interest in her.

But he was the one who mattered.

The terrible: all that had come to pass. The miraculous: all that might be yet to come.

There were choices for the making and, at long last, Rey knew she was ready to make them.

For this life, for this third option, she would come back. There would be more life and she was too much a survivor not to relish it, not to find joy in it. So she nodded at Ben, _ her _Ben, and leaned down over the railing he’d built for her so she could press her lips to his scarred cheek.

He made a soft, needy sound in his throat. She liked hearing it and, what was more, she liked knowing she was its cause. It pulled a smile from her and against her lips she felt the dimple in his cheek from his corresponding smile.

“I’ll be there,” she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Care for a [poem](https://poets.org/poem/i-walked-out-one-evening)?
> 
> [The Old Farmer's Almanac](https://www.almanac.com/) is still a thing!
> 
> When in doubt, ask [WikiHow](https://www.wikihow.com/Install-a-Wood-Fence-Post), as I did on how to build a fence.
> 
> What is a [delia pavorum](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Delia_Pavorum)?
> 
> So... that's that. I just want to say two things: first of all, thank you so much to everyone who read, commented, drew something, made something, sent me a message, left a kudos, or engaged in any other way with this story and with me. I cannot even begin to tell you how much it's meant to me.
> 
> The other thing is: [Kat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryminded/pseuds/delia-pavorum), my beta reader for this fic, without whom the damn thing would have probably overwhelmed me to the point of giving up (and a powerhouse of a writer in her own right may I add) has very gently suggested that perhaps some happy-ever-after smut may be in order. So that may be added as an extra chapter, at some point in the future!
> 
> Otherwise, that's all from me. Thank you again, all of you, for everything. ❤️


End file.
